The Audit

Becky Quick Thinks the Fed Is Too Focused on Jobs

That makes no sense historically or in the current context

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 8, 2011 at 12:30 AM

CNBC's Becky Quick uses her Fortune column to argue that the Federal Reserve should break the law. The law says... More

Bercovici Is Wrong on “Journalism 2.0” Causing Afghan Murders

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 7, 2011 at 03:36 PM

Forbes's Jeff Bercovici would like you to know that those UN workers murdered in Afghanistan after a Florida Koran-burning were... More

ProPublica and Fortune’s Unhelpful Post on GE’s Taxes

Taking the company’s word for it to rebut The New York Times

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 7, 2011 at 11:46 AM

Fortune's Allan Sloan and ProPublica's Jeff Gerth asserted a couple of days ago that The New York Times got it... More

Audit Notes: BizWeek Soars, Barofsky in Fortune, A Picture of Deflation

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 6, 2011 at 08:17 PM

It's been more than a year now since Bloomberg took over BusinessWeek, rebranded it, expanded it, and put Josh Tyrangiel... More

A Little Healthy Outrage on Executive Pay

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 6, 2011 at 02:16 PM

Roger Lowenstein had an excellent Bloomberg column a couple of weeks ago on outlandish executive compensation. Unfortunately, it got one... More

60 Minutes With a Good Look at the Foreclosure Scandal

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 5, 2011 at 07:45 PM

Hats off to 60 Minutes and Scott Pelley for taking a nice look at the foreclosure scandal on Sunday. Pelley... More

A Triangle Shirtwaist-Like Disaster, Buried By the U.S. Press

Outsourcing tragedies while paying a sliver of what our workers made 100 years ago

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 5, 2011 at 02:11 PM

The Consumerist has a fascinating post asking whether we've really eliminated our Triangle Shirtwaist Factory disasters or if we've just... More

Audit Notes: Hiltzik on Drug R&D, A 1 Percent “Score”, Paywalls

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 4, 2011 at 08:26 PM

The Los Angeles Times's Michael Hiltzik finds a study that questions the drug lobby's line on how much it costs... More

The Power of Iterative Journalism

NYT, Fortune, and ProPublica on General Electric’s taxes

By Felix Salmon   Apr 4, 2011 at 03:41 PM

On March 25, the NYT's David Kocieniewski splashed a bombshell of a story across the front page; its current headline,... More

The NYT Continues Its War on HuffPo

By Felix Salmon   Apr 4, 2011 at 09:02 AM

The NYT's declared war on the Huffington Post shows no sign of dissipating, and as ever the new-look NYT ... More

Audit Notes: Forced Fed, Bank Wages, Schroeder on Buffett

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 1, 2011 at 07:48 PM

The press continues to rifle through the Fed's discount window data dump, finding that Some 70 percent of all loans... More

A Times Snapshot of the Gilded Age Economy

The very rich do very well while the rest of the country suffers

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 1, 2011 at 02:16 PM

The New York Times's business coverage today is good and depressing—a portrait of our Second Gilded Age. On page one,... More

Audit Notes: Bloomberg on the Fed, OCC Meddles for Banks, Who Runs the World

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 31, 2011 at 07:57 PM

Bloomberg News is flooding the zone on the Fed's discount-window document dump, which the central bank had to disclose after... More

An Atlantic Ghost Story

Housing crash porn with no “there” there

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 31, 2011 at 03:05 PM

The Atlantic runs a slideshow post by 24/7 Wall St.'s Douglas A. McIntyre with the click-me headline "The New American... More

GE Flubs a Pushback Against The New York Times

The company can’t—or won’t—get its story straight on taxes

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 31, 2011 at 11:24 AM

General Electric went into full public-relations pushback mode after The New York Times's damaging story Friday on how it avoids... More