Journalists: We did our job covering lead up to crisis

Helsingin Sanomat, the largest daily newspaper in Finland, has coverage Tuesday of the World Congress of the International Press Institute, where Financial Times assistant editor Gillian Tett and New York Times news managing editor Jill Abramson defended how their papers wrote stories leading up to the current economic crisis.

Helsingin Sanomat writes, “Jill Abramson is pleased with how her newspaper has covered the crisis. 

“She noted that the New York Times, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and other quality newspaper give loud warnings on their front pages. ‘Even if our warnings would have been louder, journalism alone could not have prevented the crisis,’ Tett added, calling the situation a failure of the system that bankers were promoting. She also said that supervisory bodies of the various national governments were not awake, and were not strong enough. 

“Tett noted that her newspaper had started to talk about the bursting of the finance bubble already in 2005. She nevertheless admitted that international credit markets especially did not get enough attention in the press. 

“In the past two years the media has concentrated on explaining what is happening. She said that recent events have shown what happens when a topic is left without scrutiny. ‘My concern is whether we will have enough resources in the future,’ said Tett.”

Read more here.