This book explores how leading news media responded to the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath, showing how journalists regularly framed discussions about post-crisis regulatory reform in ways that reinforced the same market liberal policy paradigm that had ushered in the crisis. Drawing on an analysis of nearly three years of news coverage and on interviews with journalists who covered the financial crash for major media groups, Adam Cox demonstrates how this framing of issues, often focusing on the costs of tighter regulation rather than the preventive benefits, formed the basis of a post-crisis narrative in the United States that undermined the role of the state, despite the wreckage that had just occurred. He looks at how state actors, think tanks and the financial industry worked in concert to encourage such a narrative, ultimately lending support to a market liberal worldview that was being seriously challenged for the first time in decades. While highlighting journalists’ ability to resist agenda-building efforts by powerful actors, this book offers a methodology for considering media narratives based on quantitative analysis of framing patterns. News Media and the Financial Crisis is aimed at students and researchers working at the intersection of communications, journalism, political economy and public policy.

The Media and Financial Crises provides unique insights into the debate on the role of the media in the global financial crisis. Coverage is inter-disciplinary, with contributions from media studies, political economy and journalists themselves. It features a wide range of countries, including the USA, UK, Ireland, Greece, Spain and Australia, and a completely new history of financial crises in the British press over 150 years. Editors Steve Schifferes and Richard Roberts have assembled an expert set of contributors, including Joseph E Stiglitz and Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times. The role of the media has been central in shaping our response to the financial crisis. Examining its performance in comparative and historical perspectives is crucial to ensuring that the media does a better job next time. The book has five distinct parts: The Banking Crisis and the Media The Euro-Crisis and the Media Challenges for the Media The Lessons of History Media Messengers Under Interrogation The Media and Financial Crises offers broad and coherent coverage, making it ideal for both students and scholars of financial journalism, journalism studies, media studies, and media and economic history.

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

"There are three twenty-four-hour financial networks. All their slogans are like, Ẁe know what's going on on Wall Street.' But then you turn it on during the crisis, and they're like, Ẁe don't know what's going on.' It'd be like turning on the Weather Channel in a hurricane and they're just doing this: [shuddering] Ẁhy am I wet?! What's happening to me? And it's so windy!'"--Jon Stewart.

The portrayal of Greece by the international press during the financial crisis has been seen by many independent observers as very harsh. The Greeks have often been blamed for a myriad of international political problems and external economic factors beyond their control. In this original and insightful work George Tzogopoulos examines international newspaper coverage of the unfolding economic crisis in Greece. American, British, French, German and Italian broadsheet and tabloid coverage is carefully analysed. The Greek Crisis in the Media debates and dissects the extent to which the Greek response to the financial crisis has been given fair and balanced coverage by the press and questions how far politics and national stereotypes have played their part in the reporting of events. By placing the Greek experiences and treatment alongside those of other EU members such as Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain, Tzogopoulos examines and highlights similarities and differences in the ways in which different countries tackled the challenges they faced during this crucial period and explores how and why the world's media reported these events.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.

Journalism in Crisis addresses the concerns of scholars, activists, and journalists committed to Canadian journalism as a democratic institution and as a set of democratic practices. The authors look within Canada and abroad for solutions for balancing the Canadian media ecology. Public policies have been central to the creation and shaping of Canada’s media system and, rather than wait for new technologies or economic models, the contributors offer concrete recommendations for how public policies can foster journalism that can support democratic life in twenty-first century Canada. Their work, which includes new theoretical perspectives and valuable discussions of journalism practices in public, private, and community media, should be read by professional and citizen journalists, academics, media activists, policy makers and media audiences concerned about the future of democratic journalism in Canada.