Is the media to blame for the credit crisis?
Too slow, too fast, too ignorant, too influential – fingers are pointing at newspapers and TV, accusing them of shoving the world towards economic collapse. Dominic Crossley-Holland examines the charges
A few years back, business news was deemed so boring that it was usually confined to the back pages, or down bulletin. But ever since “sub-prime” entered the general vocabulary, most reporting has been taken out of the hands of the specialist, rather closed world of business journalists – with, some say, rather mixed results.
Daily events continue to underline that the single most valuable global market is the one in business information. And the new digital world, with information pouring out of every pixel, blog and hotlink, has amplified every contagious moment of the crash. Unsurprisingly, then, the role of the media in all this is coming under the spotlight, so let’s look at the main accusations on the charge sheet.
The first is that journalists were caught napping (along, it must be said,
with most financial regulators, politicians and governments). A few stars
have shone more brightly than others, notably BBC business editor Robert
Peston, Newsnight’s economics editor Paul Mason and the Financial Times’
associate editor Gillian Tett.
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