Schechter (DISCLOSURE: my colleague and business partner at the Globalvision) was so far ahead of the curve that he managed to research, shoot and edit an entire documentary predicting the coming collapse (In Debt We Trust: America Before the Bubble Bursts) literally years before it unfolded. Schechter, who blogs at MediaChannel’s News Dissector site, also began writing about the coming crisis daily (some said obsessively,) while simultaneously aggregating information from a wide range of other sources, including many specialized economics blogs. When he began, many within progressive media circles were puzzled at Schechter’s newfound focus and wondered why he had departed from his earlier emphasis on “politics” – as if the economic shenanigans and subprime crimes he was detailing had no political dimensions!
There are many other examples of reporters who got it right. Vanity Fair, has seen some excellent analysis from the likes of Nobel Prize winner Joe Stiglitz and Bethany McLean of Enron fame; Dean Starkman, who writes and edits The Audit for the Columbia Journalism Review, has done a great job not only explicating but also holding other media to task for its failings; and Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, whose blog Beat the Press features insightful commentary, is also highly recommended. In addition to his own economic reporting, Baker’s blog often takes on such MSM stalwarts as the Washington Post, the New York Times and NPR for their many failings.
Speaking of NPR, one of the best pieces of reporting anywhere – but especially from the broadcast media – came last May from an unlikely source: Ira Glass’s Polk Award-winning program This American Life.
Entitled “The Giant Pool of Money, this special, produced in a special collaboration with NPR News, explained in simple terms what the housing crisis had to do with the turmoil on Wall Street. Glass & Co. followed in October with another excellent program called “ Another Frightening Show About the Economy.”
Dan Gillmor recently explained “ The Media’s Role In The Financial Crisis” on another blog, Talking Points Memo. In his post, Gillmor detailed the many ways that “journalists were grossly deficient when it came to covering the reckless behavior, sleaze and willful ignorance of fundamental economics, much of which was reasonably obvious to anyone who was paying attention, that inflated the housing and credit bubbles of the past decade.” He rightly condemned the media for “their frequent cheerleading for bad practices — and near-total failure to warn us, repeatedly and relentlessly, of what was building” and added that they have only “made a bad situation worse.”
Gillmor also lauded several journalists and news organizations that he thought “stood out in retrospect for having seen what was coming,” including “almost alone among the Washington press corps,” the Knight Ridder (now McClatchy) newspaper group’s Washington Bureau. Finally, he lambasted the American Journalism Review for arguing recently, that “the press was all over the housing/credit mess before it blew up.”
So yes, there was, as noted above, some good journalism out there on the subject – even in such discredited media outlets as the business newsweeklies, New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. The problem, however, was that it “was overwhelmed by the happy-face, herd coverage, usually laced with quotes from people who stood to benefit from the bubble’s continued inflation,” as Gillmor phrased it. Who among us has forgotten the many stories about happy homeowners, the “reality” programs about flipping homes and becoming instantly wealthy, the endless chatter about home values that would never stop rising? “And even when the reporting was solid, which was rare enough, news organizations didn’t follow up in appropriate ways,” Gillmor concluded. “ If we can foresee a catastrophe, it’s not enough to mention it once or twice and then move on.”
Consider, in closing, this Chicago Tribune article from 2005, when David Jackson of the Chicago Tribune reported on the growing problem of home mortgage fraud in Chicago’s poorest communities. Jackson warned that “A white-collar crime wave is raking Chicago’s poorest communities, robbing vulnerable families of their homes and draining billions of dollars from the U.S. economy.” The problem, Jackson noted presciently, “now threatens to become a national financial epidemic.”
There are many other examples of reporters who got it right. Vanity Fair, has seen some excellent analysis from the likes of Nobel Prize winner Joe Stiglitz and Bethany McLean of Enron fame; Dean Starkman, who writes and edits The Audit for the Columbia Journalism Review, has done a great job not only explicating but also holding other media to task for its failings; and Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, whose blog Beat the Press features insightful commentary, is also highly recommended. In addition to his own economic reporting, Baker’s blog often takes on such MSM stalwarts as the Washington Post, the New York Times and NPR for their many failings.
Speaking of NPR, one of the best pieces of reporting anywhere – but especially from the broadcast media – came last May from an unlikely source: Ira Glass’s Polk Award-winning program This American Life.
Entitled “The Giant Pool of Money, this special, produced in a special collaboration with NPR News, explained in simple terms what the housing crisis had to do with the turmoil on Wall Street. Glass & Co. followed in October with another excellent program called “ Another Frightening Show About the Economy.”
Dan Gillmor recently explained “ The Media’s Role In The Financial Crisis” on another blog, Talking Points Memo. In his post, Gillmor detailed the many ways that “journalists were grossly deficient when it came to covering the reckless behavior, sleaze and willful ignorance of fundamental economics, much of which was reasonably obvious to anyone who was paying attention, that inflated the housing and credit bubbles of the past decade.” He rightly condemned the media for “their frequent cheerleading for bad practices — and near-total failure to warn us, repeatedly and relentlessly, of what was building” and added that they have only “made a bad situation worse.”
Gillmor also lauded several journalists and news organizations that he thought “stood out in retrospect for having seen what was coming,” including “almost alone among the Washington press corps,” the Knight Ridder (now McClatchy) newspaper group’s Washington Bureau. Finally, he lambasted the American Journalism Review for arguing recently, that “the press was all over the housing/credit mess before it blew up.”
So yes, there was, as noted above, some good journalism out there on the subject – even in such discredited media outlets as the business newsweeklies, New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. The problem, however, was that it “was overwhelmed by the happy-face, herd coverage, usually laced with quotes from people who stood to benefit from the bubble’s continued inflation,” as Gillmor phrased it. Who among us has forgotten the many stories about happy homeowners, the “reality” programs about flipping homes and becoming instantly wealthy, the endless chatter about home values that would never stop rising? “And even when the reporting was solid, which was rare enough, news organizations didn’t follow up in appropriate ways,” Gillmor concluded. “ If we can foresee a catastrophe, it’s not enough to mention it once or twice and then move on.”
Consider, in closing, this Chicago Tribune article from 2005, when David Jackson of the Chicago Tribune reported on the growing problem of home mortgage fraud in Chicago’s poorest communities. Jackson warned that “A white-collar crime wave is raking Chicago’s poorest communities, robbing vulnerable families of their homes and draining billions of dollars from the U.S. economy.” The problem, Jackson noted presciently, “now threatens to become a national financial epidemic.”
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