{"id":1588,"date":"2008-10-06T20:20:13","date_gmt":"2008-10-06T19:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=1588"},"modified":"2008-10-10T21:31:01","modified_gmt":"2008-10-10T20:31:01","slug":"understanding-journalisms-complicity-in-the-financial-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2008\/10\/understanding-journalisms-complicity-in-the-financial-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding journalism&#8217;s complicity in the financial crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"drop_cap\">T<\/span>he normally thorough <strong>Howard Kurtz<\/strong> has a piece running entitled <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/10\/05\/AR2008100502562.html\"><em>Press May Own a Share in Financial Mess<\/em><\/a>. A flavour?<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>PBS&#8217;s David Brancaccio says that &#8220;we journalists have had a long history with accepting what the smart people hand down to us, especially on complicated stuff. . . . When I would cover these very issues about problems with regulation, problems with &#8216;is this a disaster waiting to happen?&#8217; people would say: &#8216;Well, young man, you don&#8217;t have an MBA like I do. Trust us. We went to business school.'&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, duh! If instead of this type of fare you want a reasoned &#8211; albeit dry &#8211; explanation of business journalism&#8217;s role in boom and bust cycles, then please read <em><strong>The Bubble and the Media<\/strong><\/em> [<a href=\"http:\/\/faculty.chicagogsb.edu\/luigi.zingales\/research\/PSpapers\/bubble.pdf\">pdf<\/a>] by <strong>Alex Dyck<\/strong> and <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/faculty.chicagogsb.edu\/luigi.zingales\/vita\/\">Luigi Zingales<\/a><\/strong>. Written back in 2002, the abstract tells it all:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We argue that corporate reporters have strong incentives to enter into a quid pro quo relationship with their sources, where they receive private information in exchange for a positive spin on companies\u2019 news. Since the value of this relationship is higher during booms, so, too, will the pro-company bias.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Incidentally, you can read Zingales on the <strong>Paulson<\/strong> plan <a href=\"http:\/\/www.voxeu.org\/index.php?q=node\/1670\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The normally thorough Howard Kurtz has a piece running entitled Press May Own a Share in Financial Mess. A flavour?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1851,1852,237,1850,1853,1849,1854],"class_list":["post-1588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","tag-alex-dyck","tag-david-brancaccio","tag-financial-journalism","tag-financial-mess","tag-howard-kurtz","tag-luigi-zingales","tag-reporting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1588"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1639,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588\/revisions\/1639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}