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Bad News: How America's Business Press Missed the Story of the Century Kindle Edition

by Anya Schiffrin (Author, Editor) Format: Kindle Edition
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 6 ratings
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Leading scholars and journalists assess the media’s failure to see the financial crisis coming. “A sort of All the President’s Men for our time” (Kirkus Reviews).
 
Where was the business press in the weeks and months leading up to the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression? As our economy unraveled, journalists struggled to keep up with the story of the century, grappling with an alphabet soup of derivatives, backroom deals, and toxic financial instruments. But many fault the media itself for having helped to create the bubble in the first place. Did the press fail its mandate as an engine of truth by buying into the hubris and exuberance of the preceding decades?
 
Bad News is a foundational text for navigating a controversy that will be studied for years to come. With contributions from leading journalists and academics—including Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ senior editor Dean Starkman, and the New York Times’ European economics correspondent Peter S. Goodman—this collection presents a complex debate in a highly accessible format for anyone from curious readers and scholars to journalists themselves. And ultimately, the questions it raises illuminate the heated debate about the media’s role as guardians of our democracy.
 
“There are three 24-hour financial networks. All their slogans are like, ‘We know what’s going on on Wall Street.’ But then you turn it on during the crisis, and they’re like, ‘We don’t know what’s going on.’ It’d be like turning on the Weather Channel in a hurricane and they’re just doing this: [shuddering] ‘Why am I wet?! What’s happening to me? And it’s so windy!’” —Jon Stewart
 
“Thorough, hard-hitting, and admirably balanced.” —James Ledbetter, editor in charge, Reuters
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  1. Print length
    242 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
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  4. Publisher
    The New Press
  5. Publication date
    December 7, 2010
  6. File size
    1552 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review


"Though the contributors disagree on whether the media did or did not do its job, all present smart, deeply considered analyses that make for fascinating reading."
—Publisher's Weekly

"A sort of All the President’s Men for our time, and just the thing to lure bright young people into economics graduate programs and journalism school—if only there were jobs waiting on the other end."
—Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Anya Schiffrin is the director of the media and communications program at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. She spent 10 years working overseas as a journalist in Europe and Asia, writing for a number of different magazines and newspapers. She was bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswires in Amsterdam and Hanoi and wrote regularly for the Wall Street Journal. She was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in 1999-2000 and then a senior writer at the Industry Standard, covering banking and finance. She writes a monthly column for the Japanese business magazine Toyo Keizai.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004EPYEJA
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ The New Press (December 7, 2010)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 7, 2010
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1552 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 242 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 6 ratings

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
6 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Matt Walter
4.0 out of 5 stars Review of "Bad News
Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2011
Verified Purchase
Bad News offers a thought provoking analysis of the role the business press played during the financial crisis, and in the years leading up to it. Rather than making excuses for the media's failure to provide enough critical coverage of Wall Street as the housing bubble inflated, this book seeks to identify weaknesses in the way media companies are structured, and problems with the incentives and constrains journalists face. Chapters written by top business reporters and academics provide several perspectives on what the media did and didn't do well before and during the crisis. Anya Schiffrin, a professor at Columbia University and long-time journalist in Europe and Asia, edits and writes the introduction. Contributing writers include Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia Journalism Review's Dean Starkman, and Peter Goodman from The Huffington Post. As a former economy reporter myself, I found the book captured the core problems with the financial press. Bad News traces these issues to the historical beginnings of the business media and brings the debate forward with a lively discussion about how to build good sources, obtain reliable information, improve reporter expertise, and get beyond pack journalism. The book is an enjoyable read for anyone interested in understanding the motivating factors behind press coverage, and the need for financial journalists to hold Wall Street accountable.
4 people found this helpful
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Robert J. Shiller
5.0 out of 5 stars Anya Schiffrin has assembled a nice group of thinkers on what seems to many of ...
Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2014
Verified Purchase
Anya Schiffrin has assembled a nice group of thinkers on what seems to many of us a puzzle: how did the press generally miss the looming financial crisis before 2008? There are lessons here for the future.
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Michael A. Weyer
4.0 out of 5 stars A very detailed explanation of how the business press could miss what was in front of them and failed to do their public duty.
Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2011
Much has been made of how the goverment regulators and the money-makers failed to see the 2008 economic collapse coming. But little has been done on why the financial media, the people who should have been paying attention to the signs, failed to bring that to the public. Now, finally, this collection of essays wonderfully dissects the issues that prevented the media from getting the story out.

The problem was that the collapse came just as the print media was suffering from massive cutbacks, too busy fighting for their survival to see what was going on. "The Wall Street Journal," the long-time leader, was shifted by Rupert Murdoch to doing general news right when a focus on the economy was needed most. Far too many of the younger reporters grew up in a time when the economy was good, not realizing the signs of a bad slump when they were coming and didn't bother cultivating the sources older reporters needed.

The biggest surprise when reading is just how much the media championed the very companies that would end up destorying things. Jim Cramer is singled out for his infamous push for Bear Sterns just days before they went bankrupt and trying to brush it off as an "urban myth" that got him in more trouble. It seemed that the media was hesitant to go after these guys for fears that it would mar the public confidence in the economy, not getting that they were damaging the public with the refusual to go deeper into the truth.

There were people who stood up early, doing investigating but most were ignored, too small voices in the landscape. The advent of blogging is mentioned and how many of them got the inside scoop but were ignored by the rest of the media who arrogantly assumed bloggers couldn't be real press. Some unique chapters include how television shows like "Real Housewives" gave the idea that wealthy lifestyles were common while another focuses on the UK press which also suffered from the same issues as the US while trying to be more on the ball with things.

The essays are all very well-written, some a bit more technical but overall a good look at how the press who was so trusted not only ignored the oncoming storm but even helped it grow. It can be frustrating but hopefully also a lesson to prevent such disaster again and remind what good reporting should be.
2 people found this helpful
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Philip Howard
5.0 out of 5 stars Should be required reading for journalism students
Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2011
This book is a collection of essays that the editor ties nicely together. Her opening chapter provides a good summary or the big picture challenges for US journalism--beyond just the business beat. The editor manages one of the most important training centers for young journalists from around the world, and she knows this domain. But then the chapters make sense as a argumentative sequence: essays about important supplies (and demands) for information have an impact on what can be reported; changes in the organizational structure of the newsroom; some international perspective that this is not just a US problem. The conclusion usefully hints at some best practices that, if we accept that the business model for journalism has changed, should be required reading for journalism students. Actually, this should be required reading for any media professional seeking to understand the big changes in contemporary journalism.
One person found this helpful
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M
4.0 out of 5 stars Connects the Dots
Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2011
There's been plenty of ink spilled on the question of how the business press went wrong. There are arguments about the effect of the internet and the under-funding of news on serious investigative journalism. There are arguments about the moral and cultural capture of reporters by their sources in business and government. There are arguments about the increasing complexity of business, especially finance, and the inability of reporters to cope.

What this book does is connect the dots. It makes the case that the business model crisis inside journalism, compounded as it was by the macro-economic crisis, EXACERBATED the problem of capture. As journalists found themselves needing to produce more content for a hungrier, faster news cycle on ever-thinning resources, their dependence on sources willing to share increased, and their ability to be critical of those sources evaporated. No book has connected the economics and ethics of journalism so fluidly.
One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

TeaLover
4.0 out of 5 stars I found some of the contributors were a bit defensive ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 29, 2015
Verified Purchase
I found some of the contributors were a bit defensive about their own field, and not so balanced when blaming others. Others delivered very strong contributions. Overall, worthwhile
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