| Home | Blog | Ask This | Showcase | Commentary | Comments | About Us | Contributors | Contact Us |
A reporter’s tool | Are regulations killing jobs? Here’s how to find out. ASK THIS NYU Law School’s Institute for Policy Integrity has put out a tip sheet for reporters to get to the bottom of assertions that government regulations, such as ones by EPA, are killing jobs. And also to check on claims to the opposite – that regulations are creating jobs. 
Massive protests ahead? | If 25,000 people rally in midtown, is that a story? COMMENTARY The Occupy movement, active all winter, has been mostly ignored by the press. Now, along with other groups, it is stepping up its rallies and protests against corporate influence and militarism in America. Will there be any press coverage to speak of?
'A bigger platform' | A writer's appeal to the UN: Treat the global financial crisis as a human rights crisis COMMENTARY Danny Schechter, a man of many journalistic talents, discusses being asked by an NGO in Geneva to testify about his findings – in this case, findings that issue a challenge to the U.N.
| It's easy to blame debt on the debtors -- but that's missing the real story COMMENTARY American working families borrowed money not simply to buy luxuries, but because their wages were flat and going into debt was the only way they could afford basic public goods like first homes, education, and health care. So whose fault is that?
Fraud? What fraud? | If you had to guess, would you say federal financial fraud prosecutions are up? Or down? ASK THIS The pervasive fraud at the heart of the financial crisis has not slowed the steady, 13-year decline in the federal prosecution of financial institution fraud, reports TRAC. What forces are at play here?
Growing inequality | Why the new poverty numbers are bad news for tomorrow's America ASK THIS Before long people of color will be the majority in America but right now the outlook for many of them is grim. Poverty expert Judith Bell poses questions reporters should ask of elected officials and, on the local level, of demographers and other researchers.
We all deserve better | The press nods as absurdity, lies prevail in the budget debate COMMENTARY Would more accurate news coverage prompt Tea Party and Republican leaders to pay more attention to facts in their assertions about the economy? Maybe yes, maybe no. But, suggests Henry Banta, if the coverage continues at its present dismal level, we’ll never find out.
Unemployment crisis | Why journalists need to keep telling the sad stories of the American recession, and how to do it better ASK THIS As long as unemployment remains at crisis levels, reporters need to keep documenting the toll of the recession through the personal stories of those who've lost work. Don Peck, author of a new book on our pinched post-recessionary future, suggests several ways to do that more effectively and has a few story ideas to boot.
The press must sound the alarm | Remember 'too big to fail?' Want to see it again? COMMENTARY Wall Street's sense of entitlement continues. The big banks and brokerages, seeing themselves immune to punishment and abetted by lax regulators, are on the road to another crash, writes Martin Lobel. He proposes this as the new free market rule: Only small businesses have the right to fail.
‘Learn nothing, forget nothing’ | Going to London, and missing the story COMMENTARY| May 25, 2011 President Obama has gotten a lot of coverage on his trip to the UK, but the big story, the lesson the President and the press should be bringing home, is hardly noticed, writes Henry Banta. It’s the unfortunate consequences of slashes in spending and taxes – an austerity program – in the midst of a recession.
A Nieman Watchdog interview | Stiglitz’s view of the economy and how to fix it COMMENTARY| May 04, 2011 The Nobel laureate rejects GOP austerity proposals, offers wideranging plans to reduce the deficit, put people back to work, and halt growing economic inequality. Step No. 1 would be to increase revenues.
“A shameful copout” | The GOP, the financial crash, and the Washington Post editorial page COMMENTARY Republicans continue to hold to their radical ideology of free market infallibility, claiming now that the economic collapse was really the government’s fault. Henry Banta isn’t surprised that true believers would make such a claim -- but he is a little disappointed that the Washington Post seems to take it seriously.
Subsidizing Chinese spying? | State and local corporate welfare are mind-boggling. Where's the reporting? ASK THIS Cuts in spending for the poor, the disabled and on education are common as revenues decline in states across America. But little noticed along with the hand-wringing, as David Cay Johnston points out, are enormous benefits being given to rich corporations.
But in this case, no happy ending | How watchdog reporting is supposed to work SHOWCASE Toluse Olorunnipa, a Miami Herald reporter, gets a phone call from a distraught woman, tries to be of a little help, and in the process digs deep into the nightmare story of home foreclosures in Florida, exposing fraud on multiple levels and a court system that is hopelessly overwhelmed.
| Let the Bush-era tax cuts expire…all of them COMMENTARY The lame-duck Congress is debating whether to keep the personal income tax cuts for the wealthy and the middle class or only for the middle class. Bob Giles suggests that President Obama take charge and announce that he would veto any extension, for anyone. It would be a call on Americans to sacrifice, as they have in past emergencies. And income tax rates wouldn't be any higher than they were under Bill Clinton.
A criminal enterprise | Nine stories the press is underreporting -- fraud, fraud and more fraud ASK THIS From liars' loans to liars' liens, the financial and foreclosure crisis has been one big story of banks defrauding their customers -- a vast criminal enterprise. You wouldn't know it from a lot of the media coverage, though. Regulatory hero and criminologist William K. Black helps connect the dots.
In a trap for three decades | The GOP’s Communist-style rigidity COMMENTARY Republican party pronouncements on the economy are stuck in a failed, wildly unrealistic ideology unlike anything in the history of the American capitalist system. For uncritical acceptance of beliefs, it is much like Stalinism, writes Henry Banta.
Relevant reporting wanted | It’s time to do more than just say the economy is the No. 1 issue ASK THIS If voters are to go into the midterm elections with any understanding at all, the press needs to get away from he-said, she-said reporting and look into the positions that candidates and the two parties are taking. Martin Lobel offers some vital questions.
Blind devotion to a failed idea | Why is it so hard for the press to ask such an easy question? ASK THIS Republicans are clear and consistent in their economic policies. The problem is, they are the policies that led to the worst crisis in 70 years, and, to the comfort of the very rich, the largest shift of wealth in American history. So why won’t reporters ask what it is exactly that the Republicans want and expect if they are successful? (And yes, ask the same question to the many Democrats who have gone along for the ride.)
Reporting the Collapse | Republicans are locked in a passionate embrace with a corpse and won't let go COMMENTARY Efficient market theory dominated economic thinking from the days of Ronald Reagan to the collapse of 2008. It was the rationale for deregulation, the cause of a massive transfer of wealth and income from the middle class to a tiny number of the very rich. Now it is dead and gone but Republican politicians won’t let go, and many in the media show no understanding of the issue.
Reporting the Collapse | World poverty: so important but so little coverage COMMENTARY There are very few reporters who write about poverty, says Jeffrey Sachs, who lists Nicholas Kristof, Celia Dugger and Bob Herbert, all of the New York Times, as exceptions. But it is anti-poverty programs, not military action, that enhance American national security, Sachs maintains.
Reporting the Collapse | Poverty keeps growing in the U.S. but the press is almost blind to it COMMENTARY Jeffrey Sachs, a leading figure on world poverty, says the American press follows the lead of politicians by zeroing out coverage of poverty at a time when ‘the U.S. has the greatest income inequality, highest per capita prison population and worst health conditions of all high-income countries.’
A lecture on reconciliation | ‘Wall Street’s excesses caused more deaths among children than the tsunami four years ago’ COMMENTARY| November 24, 2009 Economist Richard Parker: ‘Perhaps the greatest challenge to liberal democracy in the 21st century lies in using the skills of reconciliation to re-appropriate from the economic not simply the means but the purpose of being human.’
Reporting the Collapse | How much have today’s wars weakened the economy? COMMENTARY Jobs programs of the 1930s cut deeply into Depression unemployment and World War II then put almost everybody to work, often at more than one job. Not so with today’s wars. Only the oil companies and military and security contractors have made real gains from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, says Harvard economist Linda Bilmes.
Reporting the Collapse | Wars may end but spending on them doesn’t COMMENTARY There are fundamental flaws in the way the press deals with the costs of war, says Linda Bilmes. She, along with her colleague Joseph Stiglitz, put the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan at more than $3 trillion — an enormous drag on the economy — in addition to the personal loss to families and communities of injured and dead troops.
Reporting the Collapse | A need to 'dig beneath the corporate surface' COMMENTARY Simon Johnson of MIT says reporting like Ida Tarbell's of 100 years ago is badly needed today. One suggestion: the press should take on the financial institutions that helped cause the financial collapse, and are even benefiting from it.
Reporting the Collapse | The case for taxing the very rich COMMENTARY There's no real economic recovery while so many Americans remain jobless. A new stimulus could bring about full employment, write Martin Lobel and Lee Ellen Helfrich, but it would be expensive. One way to fund it would be to increase taxes on the very rich, and cut their tax loopholes.
Reporting the Collapse | Imposing rules on the big financial firms COMMENTARY There’s wide agreement that the largest institutions need to be regulated but differing views on how to do it. Harvard economist David A. Moss calls for creating a new regulatory agency and having the big firms insure themselves for billions of dollars in coverage to protect themselves from failure.
Reporting the Collapse | A media failure compounds the financial failure COMMENTARY The press is still missing the story of fraud that has taken place, avoids reporting the ‘hollowing out’ of the middle class, and pretty much has its eyes closed to the economic decline that almost certainly lies ahead, writes Danny Schechter.
Reporting the Collapse | Needed: a new industrial policy that responds to things as they are now, not as they used to be COMMENTARY ‘Efficient Market Theory’ failed; banks and big industry shared directors (and profits) and they failed. Nevertheless, writes Martin Lobel, until now the Obama administration has been more inclined to protect large financial institutions than to prevent a recurrence of failure.
Reporting the Collapse | How about trying some unconventional wisdom for a change? COMMENTARY Renegade economist Thomas Palley supports long-term deficit spending, warns that the stimulus won't work, says it's time to rethink globalization – and argues that journalists aren't asking the really tough questions.
Reporting the collapse | What the press can learn from its failure to report the housing bubble before it burst COMMENTARY Reporters and editors need to evaluate arguments for themselves and get officials and economists to back up their statements, not just make assertions. That’s advice from someone who suspected early on that there was a bubble about to burst and did research that confirmed his suspicions.
Reporting the Collapse | Where’s the reporting on the fraud that led to the crash? COMMENTARY The mortgage-related crash was the product of wide-scale criminal fraud, says economist James Galbraith, and people should be going to prison. Instead, he says, the press has pretty much ignored that aspect of it, treating the issue as boys-will-be boys.
Reporting the Collapse | Story ideas, from an expert COMMENTARY Economist Dean Baker becomes assignment editor for a day, and asks for stories on deficits, on the mathematical basis for figuring the right size of a stimulus program, and the set-up by which banks borrow money from the Federal Reserve at 0 percent and re-lend it to the Treasury at 3-1/2 percent.
Reporting the Collapse | Patent system adds hundreds of billions every year to health care costs COMMENTARY Economist Dean Baker says drug and medical device patents drive up costs enormously but are seldom if ever mentioned in the debate over health care reform. Drugs and equipment that could be sold profitably for a few dollars may instead sell for thousands.
Reporting the Collapse | Galbraith: Deficits are the solution, not the problem COMMENTARY Economist James Galbraith sees most of the news media as taking “confused and ignorant positions” on deficits; says we need more recovery bills “to reflect the true scale of the emergency.” These views, explained in everyday language, make for an excellent primer for reporters and editors on the deficit issue.
Reporting the Collapse | As joblessness rises, reporters need to focus on calls for a second stimulus. COMMENTARY Economist Dean Baker sees a new, large stimulus as urgent. He has an alternate plan, also: Give companies tax credits to reduce workers’ hours (but not their pay) and put on new staff to take up the slack.
Reporting the Collapse, Part 1 | Doing a better job coping with economic disaster COMMENTARY In the coming weeks, Nieman Watchdog will lay out the views of experts, pointing reporters to story ideas on the causes of the economic collapse and the choices the country now faces. In this article Henry Banta spells out what has gone wrong – and why it is so important for the press to do a better job.
Reporting the Collapse | Rein in entitlements? No. Increase them, says James Galbraith. COMMENTARY It's time the press stopped falling for false, ongoing efforts to portray Social Security and Medicare as going broke, says economist James Galbraith. To the contrary, increases in entitlement program benefits would provide a major boost to economic recovery. For reporters and editors Galbraith's message is: Separate propaganda from facts.
|
|
© 2024 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
