The Financial Accounting Standards Board has released a video program that it has produced to help educate the public about the importance of high-quality financial reporting, entitled “Financially Correct.”

Five renowned authorities on financial reporting discuss the importance of and need for reliable, credible and comparable financial information and how it serves investors and the economy. They include: Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.; Abby Joseph Cohen, chair of the investment policy committee at Goldman, Sachs & Co.; Jeffrey Garten, dean of the Yale School of Management and former Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade; Judy Lewent, EVP and CFO Merck & Co. Inc.; and Floyd Norris, chief financial correspondent for The New York Times.

They cover off topics such as: how accounting is used by professional money managers; why investors are not willing to pay for lower quality earnings; how higher reporting standards drive excellence; and why managing earnings results in short-lived stock price increases.

“The FASB views the investor as the ‘customer’ of financial reporting,” says FASB chairman Edmund Jenkins. “Just as corporations are customer-focused, we focus on the investor. This was a driving force behind producing a video that would raise the public’s awareness about why high-quality financial reporting is a necessity. Our objective is to make sure that investors have the financial information they need to make well-informed investment decisions. Having credible, comparable and transparent information is essential to that process.”