The Audit

How 60 Minutes Missed on Chevron

A piece on the oil giant and the rainforest last year relies too much on innuendo

By Martha M. Hamilton   Apr 14, 2010 at 01:08 PM

"Play CBS Video." The arrow is superimposed on an image of old, rusting oil barrels emblazoned with Texaco's name. "Chevron... More

Chittum, CJR Tweet Fleet Caught Napping

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 14, 2010 at 09:51 AM

New York Times business editor Larry Ingrassia and TalkingBizNews's Chris Roush take me to the woodshed this morning for an... More

Audit Notes: Lehman Inquiries Spike, Salmon on Blogging, Derivatives

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 13, 2010 at 06:37 PM

Charlie Gasparino of Fox Business News reports that investigators are now zooming in on three areas of Lehman's accounting, including... More

The WSJ’s Pulitzer Shutout is Bad for the Country

By Dean Starkman   Apr 13, 2010 at 06:14 PM

As Alexander Cockburn theorized in a 1984 Wall Street Journal column, the Pulitzers are a kind of show business, a... More

Krugman Throws Stone at Sorkin from His Glass House

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 13, 2010 at 03:15 PM

It's New York Times columnist vs. New York Times columnist. Paul Krugman hammers his colleague Andrew Ross Sorkin for getting... More

WaPo, with Optimistic-but-Anonymous Officials, Spins Deficit Story Forward

By Holly Yeager   Apr 13, 2010 at 03:05 PM

The Washington Post’s page-one story about the federal deficit is generating a lot of buzz, as it should. It’s got... More

More Shades of Enron in NYT’s Lehman Scoop

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 13, 2010 at 09:38 AM

Lehman Brothers is smelling an awful lot like Enron these days. The New York Times splashes a scoop by Louise... More

Audit Notes: Median American Family, Bank Hole, A Wolff in Wolf’s Clothing

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 12, 2010 at 06:34 PM

Listen up, business press: Zero Hedge runs a great guest post by Graham Summers looking at why Average Joe and... More

Audit D.C. Notes: Salon Asks Where the Women Are; WaPo on the American Dream, Revised; AP on “Years of Protocol”

By Holly Yeager   Apr 12, 2010 at 06:06 PM

Salon has a smart follow-up to a Politico piece we noted last week about a new generation of pundits. While... More

Columnists Call the Turn, Wonder Why the Rest of Us Don’t

By Holly Yeager   Apr 12, 2010 at 02:26 PM

There’s a new view taking hold in the commentariat: the U.S. economy is in much better shape, but the public—and... More

Old-Fashioned WSJ Leder Spotted in the Wild

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 12, 2010 at 01:04 PM

The Wall Street Journal goes back to its roots with an excellent old-fashioned leder this morning. It's a well-told tale... More

ProPublica Humdinger on a Diabolical CDO Scheme

Investigation shows in detail how hedge-fund Magnetar gamed the system and kept the bubble going

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 9, 2010 at 06:51 PM

Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein of ProPublica have a fantastic investigation out today of Magnetar, a short-selling hedge fund that... More

“And now, more than 4,000 posts later…”

More tales from the journalism hamster wheel

By Holly Yeager   Apr 9, 2010 at 01:02 PM

A funny thing is happening right now on Michael Calderone’s Politico blog: nothing. That’s because Calderone, prolific chronicler of the... More

WSJ Story Shows Repo 105 Was Just the Beginning

An excellent investigation uncovers Wall Street hiding its true debt levels

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 9, 2010 at 10:27 AM

This is what you call a great piece of enterprise reporting. The Wall Street Journal this morning has a major... More

Audit Notes: FHLB Bomb, Subprime Fraud, Gannett Is Cheap

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 8, 2010 at 06:16 PM

Bloomberg's Jon Weil has the Lede of the Day, writing about a "trillion-dollar time bomb": The Federal Home Loan Banks... More