UPDATED JUNE 17, 2:30 p.m.
CJR’s panel on business journalism last night was excellent, if we do say so ourselves. An overflow crowd jammed the World Room of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism to see the august panel listed below make some important points about what’s wrong with business news and how to fix it.
Our thanks to the panel and to everyone who showed up.
We have video, embedded at the bottom of this post, but the audio is not so excellent. We are working on it. But for now, put on headphones and turn up the volume, and you’ll be able to make most of it out. Updates to follow.
Now What?: Business Journalism After the Meltdown
A CJR event: Tuesday, June 16
The mortgage crisis, which is costing millions their homes and has driven the world to the brink of an economic abyss, has raised difficult questions for the nation’s business press. Why was the public taken by surprise? What kind of reporting was missing and what kind is needed now? What are the lessons for financial journalism and what is its true purpose?
Join the Columbia Journalism Review and the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute for a panel discussion on the future of business journalism in the wake of the economic meltdown.
Panelists include:
• WILLIAM ACKMAN is a noted investor and founder at Pershing Square Capital Management, L.P.
• BILL GRUESKIN (moderator) is the dean of academic affairs at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and the former Deputy Managing Editor/News for The Wall Street Journal.
• JEFF MADRICK is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for The New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at The Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, The New School.
• GRETCHEN MORGENSON is assistant business and financial editor and a columnist at The New York Times.
• DEAN STARKMAN is managing editor of The Audit, an online critique of financial journalism of the Columbia Journalism Review, and the author of “Power Problem,” a critique of business coverage in the runup to the meltdown, an article supported by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute in the current issue of CJR.
WHEN: 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 16
WHERE: The World Room, Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, 116th and Broadway, New York.
I look forward to attending this important event. Prior to the event, I would like to respectfully offer this perspective from the problem solving field of Systems Thinking (ref: Drs. W. Edwards Deming, Russell L. Ackoff):
It is not enough to report on the destructive forces that are receiving little if any coverage from the mainstream business press. It is also critically important to report on the constructive (innovative) forces at work.
By "constructive forces" I am referring to the Corporate Social Responsibility movement, which has formally existed since the early 1990's (when Business for Social Responsibility www.bsr.org was formed). The work of the UN Global Compact www.unglobalcompact.org - launched by Kofi Annan at Davos in 1999 and celebrated on its 10th anniversary by a speech at Davos by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon - has never been covered by The New York Times. (I searched their web site and came up with nothing.)
As business journalists should feel challenged by their failure to warn us that Wall Street's business model was unsustainable, they should also feel challenged by their failure to report on the transformation of the global business community that is underway.
The values underlying the world's business community are changing. But as long as this news goes unreported (on a regular basis, not as once-a-year news), the customers of the world's business will not be able to vote in favor of that transformation beyond supporting individual corporations they see as being good.
A transformation cannot occur under conditions in which only the parts are visible. The whole of what is going on must be visible as well. This is the responsibility of the world's business journalists: to help the public see the "whole" of what is going on.
The managerial and developmental discipline of Systems Thinking teaches how to see that whole. Perhaps it's a discipline that should be added to the curriculum of the world's business journalism schools.
- Steven G. Brant, Trimtab Management Systems
#1 Posted by Steven Brant, CJR on Tue 9 Jun 2009 at 02:40 PM
Economist: US collapse driven by 'fraud'; Geithner covering up bank insolvency
Stephen C. Webster
Published: Saturday April 4, 2009
In an explosive interview on PBS' Bill Moyers Journal, William K. Black, a professor of economics and law with the University of Missouri, alleged that American banks and credit agencies conspired to create a system in which so-called "liars loans" could receive AAA ratings and zero oversight, amounting to a massive "fraud" at the epicenter of US finance.
But worse still, said Black, Timothy Geithner, President Barack Obama's Secretary of the Treasury, is currently engaged in a cover-up to keep the truth of America's financial insolvency from its citizens.
FULL ARTICLE HERE:
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Economist_US_collapse_driven_by_fraud_0404.html
=================
More details here:
http://worldreports.org/news
#2 Posted by CB_Brooklyn, CJR on Sun 14 Jun 2009 at 03:55 AM
Interesting, CB Brooklyn.
And so my question is: How were the rating agencies controlled by the banking intdustry? That was one of the keys.
Individuals (who) take actions (what) at specific times (when). Give facts; then it is journalism. This story is just another opinion piece from an "expert." Just generalities with no names, dates, actions, places ... etc.
#3 Posted by Louise, CJR on Mon 15 Jun 2009 at 03:46 PM
Cb Brooklyn's right; I've been writing about the fact that the ratings agencies are central to the meltdown - and for the doubting Louise, their names are Standard & Poors (yes, THAT "S&P"), Moody's and Fitch. There are smaller ratings agencies but the fir st 2 are the walmarts and costco of this con game.
Don't believe me and CB though; here's no less than Michael Lewis saying the same thing;
http://watertreading.blogspot.com/2008/12/i-think-we-have-our-story-said-jim.html
It's not even arguable that the system of graft and inside rigging is anything but. It's like saying, "Prove to me that lobbyists exist, let alone that they have more power than John Doe ordinary citizen does."
Notice, THE SYSTEM must change to rectify the problem(s). Until then, arguing about incidentals such as whether CRAs exist and the evil they have done is like arguing about the validity of retardicans or democraps while they BOTH rob you blind.
#4 Posted by jp, CJR on Tue 19 Jan 2010 at 12:04 AM