So there you have it. Whatever the corrupting effects of the revolving door, at base Wall Street is too big to jail. This is at least in part the hangover from the Arthur Andersen prosecution. At the same time, you can indict subsidiaries and executives of companies without indicting the whole corporation, so this hardly explains the government-wide reticence to prosecute individuals. We may never know what really happened there.
The Audit
06:50 AM - January 31, 2013
Frontline hits hard on the lack of crisis prosecutions
And a top DOJ official resigns the next day
‘See you on the other side’ - Meet Jessica Lum, a terminally ill 25-year-old who chose to spend what little time she had practicing journalism
#Realtalk: This is the best moment to be in journalism - The old stuff isn’t coming back, but that’s okay
Streams of consciousness - Millennials expect a steady diet of quick-hit, social-media-mediated bits and bytes. What does that mean for journalism?
Sticking with the truth - How ‘balanced’ coverage helped sustain the bogus claim that childhood vaccines can cause autism
An ink-stained stretch - Can Aaron Kushner save the Orange County Register—and the newspaper industry?
What to do if you find a baby bird
Expert advice
Inside Google’s secret lab
We might deplore the practice, but posting pictures of our food online is a way to bring everyone to the table
How the ‘World’s 50 Best’ list changed the way elite restaurants do business
“Every time the restaurant switched up its format, it got plenty of accompanying media coverage that let judges know they needed to return to see what was going on”
CJR's Guide to Online News Startups
Uptown Messenger – Hyperlocal news for a neighborhood in New Orleans
Who Owns What
The Business of Digital Journalism
A report from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Questions and exercises for journalism students.
The DOJ had ample time to interview the clayton and waterson prime whistleblowers seen in the Frontline movie. I spelled it out for them in this September 2012 story when some of their testimony (PBWT's work) was unsealed.
http://www.teribuhl.com/2012/09/18/what-bear-stearns-whistleblowers-told-the-sec-new-details-of-rmbs-fraud-cover-up/
I didn't name the whistleblowers and as I watched Martin research his film it was telling to see some of them finally go on camera. I think they were frustrated there has been no whistleblower rewards for them yet. A lot of them are still working and have jobs in the industry.
In 2011 I reported for DealFlow Media the NY AG had gone to the PBWT lawyers asking to talk to their whistleblowers. This is because NY Assemblyman Morelle asked him to try and charge the Bear traders with criminal insurance fraud. His office also contact the reporter (me) and the doc film maker (Nick Verbitsky) to see unedited tape of whistleblowers that was used in my The Atlantic and Dealflow reporting.
But the DOJ was silent during the three years I have covered the Bear Stearns traders rmbs fraud.
#1 Posted by Teri Buhl, CJR on Thu 31 Jan 2013 at 10:19 AM
A bit disappointed you missed the access journalism angle: according to the producer, the DoJ asserted the unfairness of the piece and threatened to stop cooperating with Frontline. See http://econintersect.com/b2evolution/blog1.php/2013/01/28/did-department-of-justice-threaten-npr-frontline
So now that extortionate cronyism in the Executive Branch (which has manifest here as "access journalism") has been laid bare and actually touches the ability of journalists to work this beat, who exactly is hiding the clear master narrative of corruption and cronyism behind a bunch of noise?
#2 Posted by Jonathan, CJR on Thu 31 Jan 2013 at 03:37 PM