Financial journalism the failing watchdog
It has been long since established that the press have a responsibility to the public good, one such responsibility is to act as the fourth state, a watchdog over those with position and power. But when England hit financial crisis in 2008 the financial press were quick to report something they had failed to predict. Surely with their position to oversee the comings and goings of the financial world they should have foreseen what was about to unfold in their capacity as a watchdog, but they did not.
Whats worse is that many economic journalists now deny that they failed to predict the crisis all together. Financial journalists claim they did predict the downfall though this is hardly convincing, as a country we know we had no public warning. One of the few exceptions to this is Gillian Tett who did predict somewhat the crisis to come, though was it possible to predict exactly what would happen.
It is easy to argue that even with seeing the warnings signs the press could not accurately predict the exact events that would unfold in 2008, after all reading the signs may give you an insight into the problem but could any journalist be expected to know how this story would end. Today there was a guest lecture from Daniel Ben-Ami a financial journalist on the matter of the watchdog that did not bark, that I sat in on to address the issue.
Why did our economic and financial journalists miss what was right in front of them. One suggestion is Industry capture, that they were Public Relations machined into missing the obvious. That the PR people of the large banks and investment companies were spinning the situation and the journalists in question into submission. Winning and dining away their doubts in meetings designed to throw the financial press off of the scent.
Daniel Ben Ami can see this argument, that his fellow journalists were caught in this honey trap, but feels that the grain of truth to this theory is grossly exaggerated: and I tend to agree. After all journalists like himself are intelligent people who know to avoid the spin and even meetings like these altogether. It would be a sad day for journalism and the UK in general if this was the real reason behind the failure.
So what is to blame for the failing watchdog of financial journalism? I personally think it is a lack of critical journalism with not enough of our journalists asking the hard questions and pushing the line. Uncritical journalism could really be the answer to the problem and its escalation, journalism should have dug deeper into the issues of finances with more reporters having a skeptical attitude and editorial autonomy, an independent outlook.
Any journalists job is to serve the readers, not the industry. Financial and economical journalists found it easier to identify with the financial industry not the readers: the public. This left us open to attack as it were reporting on the wrong side of the stories. It is without doubt that financial journalism generally failed to predict the crisis and failed the people at the same time, they completely failed at their role of watchdog.