Categories: OLD Media Moves

Missing the mortgage squeeze

Danny Schechter wonders on MediaChannel.org why theÂ media — particularly the New York Times — seems to have missed the signs of the current mortgage crunch now gripping the country.

Schechter wrote, “Itâ€™s odd how the front page of its widely-read Sunday edition, the oneâ€“time newspaper of record, could splash a story on how the media and the markets looked the other way as massive deals were being financed by securities cobbled together from sub-prime loans backed with no assets. Why were the signs missed, asked the Times?

“Unlike the CIA, the Times did not assess its own reporting and its role in all this.

“A few days later the newspaperâ€™s business columnist showed that, in fact, many did know and tried to raise the alarm. It seems to be an example of the front pages not knowing what the business pages had reported.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.