Prior to this financial meltdown, where was the business press? That's the question asked by Dean Starkman, formerly of the WSJ, in an article which appeared in Mother Jones in January. He hits on something I noticed a while back too:
Increasingly, business coverage has addressed its audience as investors rather than citizens, a subtle but powerful shift in perspective that has led to some curious choices.He cites several of the choices:
The Journal, for example, at times seemed to strain to find someone other than Wall Street to blame for the mortgage mess: A December 2007 story announced that borrower fraud "goes a long way toward explaining why mortgage defaults and foreclosures are rocking financial institutions," though no such evidence exists. Another Journal story last March accused "about half"of foreclosed-upon borrowers of trashing their homes. The source for the "half" bit: a PR firm working for real estate clients. Forbes, meanwhile, in a misbegotten investigation last March of Martin Eakes, the head of the Center for Responsible Lending and one of the few heroes of the subprime mess, suggested Eakes had fought to ban abusive lending in order to help the tiny nonprofit credit union he runs. Seriously.
That shift of perspective was no doubt encouraged by the Bush Administration's declaration that America should become an "ownership society."
via Firedoglake
Posted by Linkmeister at March 11, 2009 10:50 AM | TrackBackEver since sometime in the '90s there's been a trend in the press and in political rhetoric to identify the stock market with the economy. The Dow goes up and there's cheering about a robust economy; the Dow goes down and there's yelling for the government to help bail out the market to prevent economic disaster. No wonder bank executives became so envious they had to create a disaster to get their own cheering section at Treasury :-)
But as we all know, the market is not a part of the economy, it's just a casino larger than any Indian tribe can afford to build.
Posted by: Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) at March 12, 2009 03:34 AM