1) The Great Man Theory and Hank Paulson The press often seeks out and artificially creates a Big Man in times of crisis, a hero who will save us all (see Rudy Giuliani/George W. Bush, September 2001) from disaster. As capitalism teetered on the precipice in September, the press rallied around Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson of all people, and Elinore called out the media for its myth-making.
2) NPR Leads on SEC NPR (especially This American Life) has aired some of the best explanatory journalism on the financial crisis. Elinore lauded public radio’s coverage of the SEC here.
3) Picturing the Crisis A significant part of Elinore’s criticism of the Paulson coverage entailed the press’s use of pictures. She continues the photography criticism here.
4) Foreclosure Phil Gets Fingered Phil Gramm was one of the fathers of the current crisis, with his tireless work to weaken regulation in the 1990’s. Elinore liked a Mother Jones piece that detailed his work pushing through a law that left derivatives like credit-default swaps a Wild West market with no sheriff.
5) New Yorker’s Hot Air on Poverty Elinore picked apart a Malcolm Gladwell piece that argued by anecdote that poverty can give outsiders an advantage.
6) Halve Not Elinore found that grammar at Reuters wasn’t half as good as it should have been—at least in this instance.
Wow.
www.choosejesusrightnow.com
#1 Posted by Karen, CJR on Fri 2 Jan 2009 at 09:01 AM
A linguistic puzzle for Elinore. This Washington Post article today (also featured in The Australian) proves how solid the President was in making decisions:
Two Advisers Reflect on Eight Years With Bush
Bolten and Hadley Decry 'Mythologies'
The advisers make the case well, except for Hadley's curious drift into impersonality in responding to detention (read "torture")issues: "a balance to be struck" makes it seem as if Bush would rather not be seen to have been the decider when it comes to waterboarding. According to The Post:
Hadley also gave little ground to criticism of the administration's detention and interrogation policies, saying there is a balance to be struck between protecting the country and being transparent about what the government is doing to fight terrorism.
Abruptly, Bush the master of decisions becomes "you:"
"I think the balance that you can strike now, after you have not been attacked for seven years, may be a little bit different than the balance that you would strike in the immediate year after the attack when you don't know who the enemy is," Hadley said. "You've got to be careful about that kind of second-guessing, because it's hard to re-create the environment in which those decisions were made in the immediate aftermath of 9/11."
If Bush did not strike the balance, who did?
#2 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Fri 2 Jan 2009 at 07:53 PM