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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged reuters

1. December 8, 2011 12:43 PM

   A Big Corporate Welfare Story Gets Short Shrift

   Reuters's Johnston and Times Union spotlight news almost everyone else ignores

   By Ryan Chittum

   Here's a story that's calling out for more attention and isn't getting it. Reuters's David Cay Johnston wrote last week about a ruling in the New York Court of Appeals in favor of the state's corporate welfare largesse. The court used some creative reading to get around the state constitution's explicit prohibition of state loans and gifts to private companies...

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2. April 11, 2011 12:35 PM

   A Good Social Security Story—At Last

   Reuters shows it can be done

   By Trudy Lieberman

   Last week Reuters sent out a fine piece by Emily Kaiser that helped readers understand what the Social Security fight is all about by giving them enough context and history to get the gist of the debate—if it can be called that—and moving beyond the one-sided framing that has characterized almost all of the reportage over the past fifteen months....

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3. October 7, 2011 02:47 PM

   A Weak Case for the Middle Class Embracing Globalization

   By Ryan Chittum

   Reuters’s David Rohde writes about Bowling Green, Kentucky, and how it’s doing well by embracing globalization. But it’s a pretty weak argument. First, the dumb-question-as-headline thing, which is a pet peeve: Can Confucius save America’s middle class? No, Confucius can't save America’s middle class. Nor can the Confucius Institute, which has started up a program at Western Kentucky University. And...

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4. August 8, 2012 11:00 AM

   A welcome spotlight on trade deals

   Reuters's Johnston goes to Korea to look at the prospects of a new agreement

   By Ryan Chittum

   In March, the Obama administration implemented a trade agreement with South Korea that it promised, implausibly, would create tens of thousands of jobs to the U.S. While we've had just two monthly trade reports since the agreement went into effect, they're not looking good for the home team, as David Cay Johnston of Reuters is sharp to point out. In...

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5. October 26, 2012 02:50 PM

   Appending Larry

   Google's "premature release" spins off another viral meme — and an ethical question

   By Sara Morrison

   A recent Reuters article on Google's prematurely released earnings report noted that a Twitter parody account was created to mock the "PENDING LARRY QUOTE" in the company’s unfinished document: "[W]ithin minutes, though, an unknown prankster set up a "PendingLarry" Twitter feed to hypothesize what the missing quote might be. Among the highlights: 'Man, our privacy was WAY violated today.'" After...

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6. March 16, 2012 02:35 AM

   Audit Notes: 1966 Wages, Fracking’s Chickens and Eggs, Whistleblowers

   By Ryan Chittum

   David Cay Johnston looks at the latest income-distribution data from Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, and notes that in this recovery, unlike one that FDR oversaw, almost all the income gains have gone to the ultra-rich. Roosevelt brought in trustbusters, reformers and even an expert at Wall Street manipulations to implement policies benefiting the vast majority. By contrast, while Obama...

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7. November 19, 2010 11:53 PM

   Audit Notes: WSJ Scoop, SAC’s Golf Guy, Two Old Guys Flailing

   By Ryan Chittum

   The Wall Street Journal has a big scoop out this evening, reporting that the federal government is winding up a huge, three-year investigation into widespread insider trading, "criminal and civil probes (that) authorities say could eclipse the impact on the financial industry of any previous such investigation." In the crosshairs: Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Prudential Financial, and many others....

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8. January 27, 2011 09:28 PM

   Audit Notes: Baffled Wall Street Historians, Too Much Demand, Deficits to Shrink

   By Ryan Chittum

   Here's your Quote of the Day, from The New York Times's story on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission report. Wall Street historian Steve Fraser: “For a historian, it’s a baffling moment,” he said. “All the stars seemed aligned to produce real, fundamental change in the direction of public policy, and yet here we are with an administration itself bending over...

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9. December 15, 2011 06:46 PM

   Audit Notes: Bloomberg Empire Edition

   By Ryan Chittum

   Reuters's Jack Shafer writes that Bloomberg BusinessWeek has become the best magazine in the country, his "primary source of long-form, print journalism": Who would have thought that “Bloomberg” and “BusinessWeek,” the two most plodding names in the history of journalism, could merge to create a superb general interest magazine? I’m not saying that every issue is a treat, but nearly...

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10. May 11, 2012 07:34 PM

    Audit notes: Chesapeake woes, the Untaxable, Reuters on HSBC

    By Ryan Chittum

    The hits keep coming at Chesapeake Energy. Today, it's The Wall Street Journal's turn. It reports on page one that the company has put $1.4 billion in unreported liabilities off its balance sheet, far more than analysts had estimated. Most of these costs will hit this year and next, at a time when the company needs to raise substantial cash...

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11. June 28, 2012 11:56 PM

    Audit Notes: Euro dissolution risk, Reuters tailed, Exxon and the press

    By Ryan Chittum

    Simon Johnson, who has warned loudly for years about the critical danger posed by too-big-to-fail banks, as well as their chokehold on the government and the economy, writes at Bloomberg View that the U.S. financial system isn't prepared to withstand a breakup of the euro: Very few people seem to have gotten their heads around dissolution risk. Here’s what it...

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12. January 25, 2011 08:07 PM

    Audit Notes: FCIC Report, Reuters Talking Points, WSJ Sues

    By Ryan Chittum

    The New York Times gets hold of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission report first and it seems somewhat promising. Here's the money quote: “The crisis was the result of human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire,” the report states. “The captains of finance and the public stewards of our financial system ignored warnings and...

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13. December 17, 2010 06:05 PM

    Audit Notes: Inequality in NYC, Reuters on Dumb Money, Ireland

    By Ryan Chittum

    Yves Smith, in a "Banana Republic Watch," points to a report (PDF) from the Fiscal Policy Institute that finds inequality in New York City is worse than that in all but fifteen countries. Since 1980, the share of income in New York City going to the top 1 percent has gone from 12 percent to 47 percent. More: There are...

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14. June 29, 2012 08:07 PM

    Audit Notes: Insufferable in Aspen, Libor, Amazon Marketplace

    Ending universal suffrage intrigues a CNBCer

    By Ryan Chittum

    CNBC's John Carney finally heard an idea that intrigued him at the Aspen Ideas Festival: Ending universal suffrage: His argument had two parts. The first was that some people simply are not ready for democracy. They have no functional conception of the state in their minds, much less an understanding of representative, deliberative democracy. Some are so poor that they...

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15. January 20, 2012 09:43 PM

    Audit Notes: Justice’s Revolving Door, GE Probed, iBooks Author

    By Ryan Chittum

    Reuters's Scot J. Paltrow reports that Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder and the head of his criminal division worked for a law firm that represented a "Who's Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud" (emphasis mine): The firm, Covington & Burling, is one of Washington's biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and...

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16. March 11, 2011 07:55 PM

    Audit Notes: Lehman’s Green Monster, Sands Storm, Amazon Taxes

    By Ryan Chittum

    Bloomberg's Christine Harper Richard and Bob Ivry circle back to the Fenway deal Lehman Brothers made with Hudson Castle that allowed it to cook its books by lending $3 billion to itself. Lehman turned souring real estate investments into top- rated securities that the bank’s insiders dubbed “goat poo,” according to court records. The securities, called Fenway commercial paper, helped...

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17. February 3, 2012 06:44 PM

    Audit Notes: Minimum Wage and the Recession, Facebook’s Numbers, Most Powerless

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Wall Street Journal runs an editorial today criticizing Mitt Romney for his support for increasing the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation. Few policies are as destructive as the minimum wage at keeping the young and least skilled out of the job market. By setting an arbitrary wage floor, politicians make it impossible for businesses to hire people...

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18. May 1, 2012 01:40 AM

    Audit Notes: Murdoch’s Lobbyists, Reuters on Chesapeake, Shadow Space (UPDATED)

    By Ryan Chittum

    Top News Corporation officials talked about enlisting the top Wall Street Journal Europe editor to lobby politicians for Murdoch's multibillionaire BSkyB bid. ProPublica: But email messages released Tuesday indicate that News Corp. executives at least considered dispatching top editors of The Wall Street Journal Europe and The Times of London, both News Corp. holdings, to advocate the BSkyB deal... On...

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19. August 15, 2011 08:15 PM

    Audit Notes: One Termer, HAMP Dwindles, The Crisis Narrative Shift

    By Ryan Chittum

    These two graphs from an NYT story this weekend pretty much show why Barack Obama is going to be a one-termer: Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Plouffe, and his chief of staff, William M. Daley, want him to maintain a pragmatic strategy of appealing to independent voters by advocating ideas that can pass Congress, even if they may not have...

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20. August 4, 2011 08:03 PM

    Audit Notes: Panic in the Markets

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 512 points today, some 4.3 percent, as panic takes hold in global markets. The 10-year Treasury bond's yield tumbled to 2.46 percent, signaling the bond vigilantes long warned about by folks like the Wall Street Journal editorial page are being utterly routed. Gillian Tett writes in the Financial Times that the crisis in Europe...

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