Financial journalism is under attack for it’s failure to report the global economic crisis. But it’s not all bad news.
The excellent Evan Davis told Press Gazette that he didn’t think his financial journalism colleagues gave the public enough warning about the mess we’re now in. Ernst and Young have research that shows that our real disposable incomes have plummeted over the last few years, but the money media didn’t seem to spot that until Northern Rock went bust.
“I do ask whether we did our best to warn people of impending problems, I don’t think we warned people sufficiently loudly or clearly. When everything is going well no one is interested in hearing it. Some of us suffered from giving the warnings a bit too early in the whole cycle. By about 2005 that warning was beginning to lose credibility.”
Evan is now presenter of Today where his general intelligence plus his economic know-how has lifted the quality of the programme, so perhaps he’s just expressing frustration that he’s not on his former specialist beat.
But Polis is conducting a major research programme in to financial journalism to see if his fears are justified.
The economy is obviously a global structure with American banking problems pushing other economies into crisis. For us it means a bit of belt-tightening but in places like Africa it can wipe out years of carefully nurtured growth. So it’s good to hear that the Diageo awards have again highlighted excellence in business reporting from that continent. Go here to see, listen and watch the winners.
Charlie,
I couldn’t agree more.Financial news has been off the mainstream agenda for some time now.There have been many warnings about the build up of credit,house price inflation,consumer led booms but the media had up to Northern Rock been strangely silent.
I find Evan’s remarks rather strange.He was after all in a prime position to tell the nation.I suppose that his agenda is to a large extent framed by what the BBC thinks that the public wants to here.
It was only the site of queues outside a certain buliding society that woke the media up to the situation.
Let’s pick another example.The 10p tax fiasco had been public knowledge for 12 months.Some voices portrayed the implications but it only became news agenda when it was added to the list of anti Brown agenda.
Hi Charlie,
As a financial journalist with 16 years’ print experience I can assure you that I have consistently reported on and warned about the rising tide of debt and the economic consequences thereof in most national newspapers, such as the FT, The Times, the Sunday Times, Independent and Mail on Sunday, not to mention a number of financial websites. I can refer to plenty of features as evidence if you like.
Evan is a TV journalist. A good one. But it’s so much harder to cover complex financial stories on TV than in print, so TV often doesn’t bother in my opinion.
But then I am biased!