From Mediachannel.org
Embedded Business Press Misses Story of the Century
The severe economic crisis now gripping the United States — and hence the entire world — has been labeled by the Paper of Record as the “financial equivalent of 9/11.”
In its severity and overall impact, the comparison may hold true. But when it comes to media coverage, a far better analogy can be made to the invasion and occupation of Iraq undertaken in the wake of the terror attacks.
Just as our mainstream news reporters failed to do their job in alerting us an impending and fairly obvious disaster prior to the war in Iraq – and then ‘embedded’ themselves with the very people they were supposedly reporting on during the invasion and subsequent occupation — so too did our complaisant business press, which by and large missed the story of the disaster now threatening the very pillars of the global capitalist system itself.
Complicity, careerism, access, ratings, deregulation, glory, money, corporate and conglomerate media… the reasons behind our pusillanimous press coverage of the run up to the financial meltdown are much the same as those underlying the run up to war – and so are the results. Business reporters ‘embedded’ on Wall Street — as enamored of titans of commerce as their Pentagon press peers were with Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell – are now piling bad information on top of no information. Once again, we-the-people are paying the price in treasure and sadly, in some cases, blood.
Of course, I’m not alone in pointing fingers. As the AP’s David Bauder recently reported, “some of the nation’s top financial journalists believe reporters dropped the ball as the nation’s economy tumbled toward crisis mode.”
Sixty-two of the one hundred journalists surveyed were critical of the media’s work, Bauder noted, “suggesting there was an over-exuberance about the economy and a failure to connect the dots as troubles began.” The journalists — mostly from organizations such as CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the like — differed on who deserved the blame for the crisis: 45 said banks and 44 said regulators. Shockingly, “Only two believed that the media was mostly to blame, and nine pointed their fingers at consumers,” Bauder reported. One anonymous journalist’s comment was most telling: “Everyone dropped the ball. But the media does not have nearly as much blood on its hands as the financial industry and government.” Another noted, “The media, like real life, is full of a diversity of opinions and stories. The warning signs were there, and stories were written about the looming dangers. I find it offensive that there’s a notion that the entire business press can be criticized for a failure to see the future once we’re in a troubled climate.”
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The severe economic crisis now gripping the United States — and hence the entire world — has been labeled by the Paper of Record as the “financial equivalent of 9/11.”
In its severity and overall impact, the comparison may hold true. But when it comes to media coverage, a far better analogy can be made to the invasion and occupation of Iraq undertaken in the wake of the terror attacks.
Just as our mainstream news reporters failed to do their job in alerting us an impending and fairly obvious disaster prior to the war in Iraq – and then ‘embedded’ themselves with the very people they were supposedly reporting on during the invasion and subsequent occupation — so too did our complaisant business press, which by and large missed the story of the disaster now threatening the very pillars of the global capitalist system itself.
Complicity, careerism, access, ratings, deregulation, glory, money, corporate and conglomerate media… the reasons behind our pusillanimous press coverage of the run up to the financial meltdown are much the same as those underlying the run up to war – and so are the results. Business reporters ‘embedded’ on Wall Street — as enamored of titans of commerce as their Pentagon press peers were with Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell – are now piling bad information on top of no information. Once again, we-the-people are paying the price in treasure and sadly, in some cases, blood.
Of course, I’m not alone in pointing fingers. As the AP’s David Bauder recently reported, “some of the nation’s top financial journalists believe reporters dropped the ball as the nation’s economy tumbled toward crisis mode.”
Sixty-two of the one hundred journalists surveyed were critical of the media’s work, Bauder noted, “suggesting there was an over-exuberance about the economy and a failure to connect the dots as troubles began.” The journalists — mostly from organizations such as CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the like — differed on who deserved the blame for the crisis: 45 said banks and 44 said regulators. Shockingly, “Only two believed that the media was mostly to blame, and nine pointed their fingers at consumers,” Bauder reported. One anonymous journalist’s comment was most telling: “Everyone dropped the ball. But the media does not have nearly as much blood on its hands as the financial industry and government.” Another noted, “The media, like real life, is full of a diversity of opinions and stories. The warning signs were there, and stories were written about the looming dangers. I find it offensive that there’s a notion that the entire business press can be criticized for a failure to see the future once we’re in a troubled climate.”
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