No way biz media could have predicted financial meltdown

Eric Starkman, who runs a public relations agency called Starkman & Associates, has an interested perspective on what’s wrong with the media world — it’s the leaders — but he also provides an interesting perspective on how the business media performed during the financial crisis.

Starkman writes, “Personally, I don’t buy into this notion that reporters should have been able to predict the financial meltdown.  It takes unabashed arrogance for journalists to believe that they are so well-steeped in economics and high finance that they can possibly forewarn the nation of a pending financial collapse.  They are on the sidelines, not in the game itself.

“Most business journalists tend to mime conventional wisdom of the day, which explains why the leaders of Enron, Worldcom, and Tyco were heralded in newspaper and magazine cover stories before those companies blew up.  Journalists would serve their audiences best if they reported as many informed perspectives as possible, rather than spew out their too often misinformed and biased opinions about the companies and subjects they supposedly objectively cover.

“As for the prescience of mainstream journalism about Goldman Sachs and Paulson, check out this fawning profile that Fortune published in 2004.”

Read more here.