By Nathalie Pierrepont March 16, 2012
For the last five years, social critics have been asking why no one, including the press, appeared to see the financial crisis coming.
“One of the things that distinguishes the financial crises of 2007 and 2008 from our point of view is the degree to which it took everyone by surprise,” said Dean Starkman, the editor of the business journalism blog The Audit, which is run by the Columbia Journalism Review, at a March panel at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
The panel, entitled “Has the Business Press Failed the Public Trust?” explored the news media’s culpability in failing to stop the crisis or at least sound an alarm.
The panelists addressed journalists’ ability to engage the masses on business issues and the importance of acknowledging the confluence of regulators and businesses.
The panel, which was hosted by Columbia Journalism Review and Public Business Media, included Starkman and four other business journalists: Jeff Horwitz, an investigative reporter and risk management editor at American Banker; Suzanne Kapner, a banking reporter at The Wall Street Journal; Felix Salmon, a finance blogger at Reuters; and Larry Ingrassia, the head business editor at The New York Times.
Starkman wrote an article for the January-February issue CJR asserting that business journalism has catered more to investors’ interests over the last twenty years, short-changing the interests of the broader public.
“Sometimes these interests are not always in perfect alignment,” Starkman said. “In fact, they’re oftentimes at odds.” He added that the business press had failed to acknowledge that “tension.”
Ingrassia said that business journalists do not draw a distinction between writing for investors from the writing for the public interest. “I think we do a lot of both, and we serve the public by doing both,” he said.
Ingrassia added that there has been “much more accountability” in business journalism in the last 10 years than there had been in the last 30. He added that he saw “a lot more in-depth, hard-hitting journalism that questions the way that business is done” and “a lot more sophisticated reporters.”
Horwitz defended the pre-crisis reporting on the mortgage market at American Banker. “We did get a lot of things right,” he said. “The tone [of those articles] was skeptical, but not aggressive,” he said.
Horwitz added, “I don’t know if that the world was really ready, on a larger level, to grab those [stories].”
Salmon said he believes it’s difficult to draw the public’s attention to brewing financial problems and that the reason journalism tends to follow crises rather than precede them is “that’s when you want someone to blame.” He added, “If you do the journalism beforehand, no one cares.”
Ingrassia said the business press failed to recognize the importance of the government’s role in the financial system and bring it to the public’s attention. He said journalists must get better at “covering the intersection of government and business and regulation.”
This entry was posted on Friday, March 16th, 2012 at 1:54 am. It is filed under Skills and Tradecraft and tagged with American Banker, CJR, financial crisis, investors, regulation, Reuters, The Audit, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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