The Watchdog That Didn't Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism
The Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter details “how the U.S. business press could miss the most important economic implosion of the past eighty years” (Eric Alterman, media columnist for The Nation).
 
In this sweeping, incisive post-mortem, Dean Starkman exposes the critical shortcomings that softened coverage in the business press during the mortgage era and the years leading up to the financial collapse of 2008. He examines the deep cultural and structural shifts—some unavoidable, some self-inflicted—that eroded journalism’s appetite for its role as watchdog. The result was a deafening silence about systemic corruption in the financial industry. Tragically, this silence grew only more profound as the mortgage madness reached its terrible apogee from 2004 through 2006.

Starkman frames his analysis in a broad argument about journalism itself, dividing the profession into two competing approaches—access reporting and accountability reporting—which rely on entirely different sources and produce radically different representations of reality. As Starkman explains, access journalism came to dominate business reporting in the 1990s, a process he calls “CNBCization,” and rather than examining risky, even corrupt, corporate behavior, mainstream reporters focused on profiling executives and informing investors. Starkman concludes with a critique of the digital-news ideology and corporate influence, which threaten to further undermine investigative reporting, and he shows how financial coverage, and journalism as a whole, can reclaim its bite.
 
“Can stand as a potentially enduring case study of what went wrong and why.”—Alec Klein, national bestselling author of Aftermath
 
“With detailed statistics, Starkman provides keen analysis of how the media failed in its mission at a crucial time for the U.S. economy.”—Booklist
1115380259
The Watchdog That Didn't Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism
The Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter details “how the U.S. business press could miss the most important economic implosion of the past eighty years” (Eric Alterman, media columnist for The Nation).
 
In this sweeping, incisive post-mortem, Dean Starkman exposes the critical shortcomings that softened coverage in the business press during the mortgage era and the years leading up to the financial collapse of 2008. He examines the deep cultural and structural shifts—some unavoidable, some self-inflicted—that eroded journalism’s appetite for its role as watchdog. The result was a deafening silence about systemic corruption in the financial industry. Tragically, this silence grew only more profound as the mortgage madness reached its terrible apogee from 2004 through 2006.

Starkman frames his analysis in a broad argument about journalism itself, dividing the profession into two competing approaches—access reporting and accountability reporting—which rely on entirely different sources and produce radically different representations of reality. As Starkman explains, access journalism came to dominate business reporting in the 1990s, a process he calls “CNBCization,” and rather than examining risky, even corrupt, corporate behavior, mainstream reporters focused on profiling executives and informing investors. Starkman concludes with a critique of the digital-news ideology and corporate influence, which threaten to further undermine investigative reporting, and he shows how financial coverage, and journalism as a whole, can reclaim its bite.
 
“Can stand as a potentially enduring case study of what went wrong and why.”—Alec Klein, national bestselling author of Aftermath
 
“With detailed statistics, Starkman provides keen analysis of how the media failed in its mission at a crucial time for the U.S. economy.”—Booklist
2.99 In Stock
The Watchdog That Didn't Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism

The Watchdog That Didn't Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism

by Dean Starkman
The Watchdog That Didn't Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism

The Watchdog That Didn't Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism

by Dean Starkman

eBook

$2.99 

Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers

LEND ME® See Details

Overview

The Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter details “how the U.S. business press could miss the most important economic implosion of the past eighty years” (Eric Alterman, media columnist for The Nation).
 
In this sweeping, incisive post-mortem, Dean Starkman exposes the critical shortcomings that softened coverage in the business press during the mortgage era and the years leading up to the financial collapse of 2008. He examines the deep cultural and structural shifts—some unavoidable, some self-inflicted—that eroded journalism’s appetite for its role as watchdog. The result was a deafening silence about systemic corruption in the financial industry. Tragically, this silence grew only more profound as the mortgage madness reached its terrible apogee from 2004 through 2006.

Starkman frames his analysis in a broad argument about journalism itself, dividing the profession into two competing approaches—access reporting and accountability reporting—which rely on entirely different sources and produce radically different representations of reality. As Starkman explains, access journalism came to dominate business reporting in the 1990s, a process he calls “CNBCization,” and rather than examining risky, even corrupt, corporate behavior, mainstream reporters focused on profiling executives and informing investors. Starkman concludes with a critique of the digital-news ideology and corporate influence, which threaten to further undermine investigative reporting, and he shows how financial coverage, and journalism as a whole, can reclaim its bite.
 
“Can stand as a potentially enduring case study of what went wrong and why.”—Alec Klein, national bestselling author of Aftermath
 
“With detailed statistics, Starkman provides keen analysis of how the media failed in its mission at a crucial time for the U.S. economy.”—Booklist

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780231536288
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publication date: 07/15/2020
Series: Columbia Journalism Review
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 382
File size: 2 MB
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Dean Starkman is based in New York and covers Wall Street as a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. A reporter for two decades, he worked for eight years as a Wall Street Journal staff writer and was chief of the Providence Journal's investigative unit. He has won numerous national and regional journalism awards and helped lead the Providence Journal to the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Investigations.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Access and Accountability
1. Ida Tarbell, Muckraking, and the Rise of Accountability Reporting
2. Access and Messenger Boys: The Roots of Business News and the Birth of the Wall Street Journal
3. Kilgore's Revolution at the Wall Street Journal: Rise of the Great Story
4. Muckraking Goes Mainstream: Democratizing Financial and Technical Knowledge
5. CNBCization: Insiders, Access, and the Return of the Messenger Boy
6. Subprime Rises in the 1990s: Journalism and Regulation Fight Back
7. Muckraking the Banks, 2000–2003: A Last Gasp for Journalism and Regulation
8. Three Journalism Outsiders Unearth the Looming Mortgage Crisis
9. The Watchdog That Didn't Bark: The Disappearance of Accountability Reporting and the Mortgage Frenzy, 2004–2006
10. Digitism, Corporatism, and the Future of Journalism: As the Hamster Wheel Turns
Notes
Bibliography
Index

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews