The Audit

The Crystal Ball For Chris Dodd Revisited

A trip through the revolving door, but not to Wall Street

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 3, 2011 at 06:56 PM

Newly retired Democratic Senator Chris Dodd has now announced what he'll be doing for a post-Senate career: lobbying for Hollywood.... More

CNBC Pushes the Financial-Terrorism Nonsense

“Really good information” on why “outside forces may have” caused the 2008 Crash

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 3, 2011 at 01:02 PM

I took the hammer to The Washington Times the other day for a dumb story on a report that says... More

Audit Notes: Criminal Query, Ritholtz on McKinsey; Obama’s Jobs Panel

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 2, 2011 at 07:47 PM

— The Financial Times reports that the SEC is investigating whether Las Vegas Sands bribed foreign officials. The headline: Sands... More

SI/CBS College Football Investigation Lacks Context

Their stats on player arrests aren’t so eye-opening after all

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 2, 2011 at 05:40 PM

Sports Illustrated and CBS News are out with a big investigation into crime in college football. They looked at the... More

Audit Notes: Unnamed Source No-No, “Grassroots” Wisconsin, Kinsley

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 1, 2011 at 07:47 PM

The Washington Post gives us a case study today in how not to use anonymous sources. It reports that the... More

USA Today’s Ham-fisted Public Workers Story

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 1, 2011 at 05:47 PM

USA Today runs a poor story this morning that says its analysis finds that government workers make more in total... More

The NYT’s Incomplete Article on State Pension Plans

By Felix Salmon   Mar 1, 2011 at 03:13 PM

Steven Greenhouse has a long article in today's NYT about an attempt by the states to deal with their "strained"... More

Now It’s Blame-the-Terrorists For the Crash of ‘08

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 1, 2011 at 12:40 PM

We've had the blame-the-borrowers campaign a la Rantin' Rick Santelli. We've seen the blame-the-gubmint campaign a la Peter Wallison. Now... More

PolitiFact Shows A Fox Host Is Wrong, But Hedges Its Verdict (UPDATED)

By Ryan Chittum   Feb 28, 2011 at 01:03 PM

For an organization whose reason for being is to judge what's a fact and what's not, PolitiFact sure has a... More

The WSJ’s Peculiar Reporting On GM Credit

By Felix Salmon   Feb 28, 2011 at 11:19 AM

GM debt has been through a lot of late. In May 2009, car czar Steve Rattner made a bold and... More

Audit Notes: Grand Oil Party, The Limits of Anecdote, Mod Investors

By Ryan Chittum   Feb 25, 2011 at 06:51 PM

The Economist's Matt Steinglass reports on an egregious government giveaway to the oil companies—one that started accidentally and has now... More

HuffPo Shows OCC Still Poster Child of Regulatory Capture

By Ryan Chittum   Feb 25, 2011 at 02:30 PM

The Huffington Post's Shahien Nasiripour has some interesting reporting in a story on the Obama administration's move to settle the... More

WSJ Slips Up on a Union Story

And its misses tilt toward the anti-labor side

By Ryan Chittum   Feb 24, 2011 at 09:45 PM

The Wall Street Journal's page-one story yesteday on the union battle in Wisconsin erred on a few points, all of... More

Bloomberg Reveals Citi’s Deceptive Reporting

By Felix Salmon   Feb 24, 2011 at 05:00 PM

On February 14, 2008, John Lyons, the examiner in charge of large bank supervision at the OCC, sent Citigroup and... More

NYT’s Scoop on an Alleged Roger Ailes Coverup

Lawyers say the Fox chief urged Judith Regan to lie to the feds about Giuliani pal Bernie Kerik

By Ryan Chittum   Feb 24, 2011 at 02:44 PM

The New York Times has an excellent scoop out today that could mean trouble for Fox News's Roger Ailes. It's... More