Press miss foreclosure scandal news

Ryan Chittum of the Columbia Journalism Review writes that most of the business media, except for Reuters and the Des Moines Register, missed the news that the Iowa attorney general plans to bring criminal charges in the foreclosure scandal.

Chittum writes, “This is a story the rest of the press might want to report. The ante just got upped bit on this scandal.

“This isn’t necessarily just another politician blowing smoke. BusinessWeek put the longtime AG, Tom Miller, on its cover a couple of years ago with the headline ‘They Warned Us About the Mortgage Crisis.’ He and other state attorneys general tried to crack down on predatory lending but were preempted by the Bush administration. And he’s heading up the joint investigation by all fifty states into the scandal. It’s worth following what he has to say.

“Especially when it’s ‘we will put people in jail.’

“That’s also notable, since as we discussed last week, no major executive has gone to jail for the financial crisis and its fallout. It’s unclear, of course, if Iowa will be able to prosecute executives or just the low-level employees who implemented the fraud.”

Read more here.