NewsNation, a Nexstar media property that reaches nearly 67 million households in the United States through their TVs, decided to dedicate two minutes and 39 seconds to the accountant shortage for its morning segment today. The full segment is embedded below if you’d like to skip the text1.
NN anchor Elizabeth Prann took to the airwaves to let your TV-watching grandma know that accountants do more than taxes and warned a shortage of them could have catastrophic effects on the economy.
Yes, we already knew this. Grandma doesn’t.
She says: “Immediately you think ‘oh my goodness, tax season is in the spring and I need my CPA to help me with my taxes. If that person is tired they’ll make mistakes, the IRS is going to come knocking.’ That’s just one of the ways that this could impact us at home. But really it’s much more than that.”
Do you feel appreciated and valued yet?
In the second half of the short segment, they discuss AI. Highlight from that:
Morning in America host Markie Martin: “How is artificial intelligence playing a role?”
Elizabeth: “Well, it’s playing a role a lot. And if you think about people going into the business, well let’s think of Gen Zers. A lot of them make their decisions based on social media, or things online, maybe an accountant really isn’t that appealing, it’s not really that sexy, it’s not being shared online.”
“And then there are other factors like the pay…The pay is not great.”
So they really didn’t address how AI is playing a role, much less a lot, except to say that people used “an AI-generated form” to fill out their taxes in TurboTax last year (?). They also made a grave error in their reporting:
Earning the title of certified public accountant (CPA) requires at least a master’s degree and passing a grueling four-hour exam.
Wouldn’t just four hours of CPA exam be lovely and hardly grueling at all? One can dream…
“Salaries for entry level accounting positions aren’t very high,” read an accompanying article about the segment. “[A]nd it can take years to build a loyal client base.” Wat? What does that have to do with accounting degrees? You know what, never mind.
I guess as far as two minute segments go it could have been worse. We didn’t really come away from that understanding how AI can solve the accounting shortage but now your grandma is going to be freaked out about her 401k and someone’s uncle may finally understand that accountants do more than taxes so maybe that was an effective use of less than three minutes of broadcast time.
- Words are dumb anyway. ↩︎
Four hours, eh? They might have been in a rush to produce “content.”
That’s right. An accountant has to take 4 separate exams, with 4 hours per exam. This is supposed to be taken over a span of 30 months (2.5 years) from passing the 1st exam.
It’s a 16.5 hour exam over three days, and two years of sanctioned experience.
Who writes these articles?
Elizabeth Prann, the anchor in the video segment, has the byline in the article I linked but who knows. AI maybe.
Hah! Well, seems like misinformation runs rampant! I like how AI gets thrown around so much as the newest buzzword. Somebody told me they were using AI. They were googling something.
Sad thing is nothing meaningful is being done to fix the new blood shortage, and we’re only getting busier. I’m toying with ideas of moving on to something different.
4 exams, 4 hours each.