The barrier for business journalism

Charlie Beckett of the London School of Economics writes about the issues facing business journalism if it is to improve.

Beckett writes, “Financial journalism will always disappoint those in a complex and basically boring business who bemoan the fact that the media is ignorant and that the public doesn’t understand (or care) about the finer points about annuities, dividends and compound interest rates.

“Indeed, specialist financial journalism will always fail to reach the great mass of people who really need to know, as opposed to the silver surfers with time and money on their hand to investigate the issues and profit from the good financial journalism that is out there.

“Some real barriers to progress were identified:

1. The chilling effect of litigation and financial PR
2. The lack of resource for investigation
3. The lack of journalists who are passionate and expert about finance – as opposed to doing it by default.”

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