Crisis hipotecaria: ¿defendiendo lo indefendible?

Al hilo de la defensa que algunos periodistas han hecho de la cobertura de la actual crisis hipotecaria, Dan Gillmor les replica que están defendiendo lo indefendible: la mayoría de los periodistas no tenían ni idea o no querían tener ni idea de lo que estaba pasando:

"When an economic catastrophe of this sort — and entirely predicable one — is building, journalists are failing to do their jobs when they don’t harp on it.

As I said in a previous posting, newspapers and broadcasters were raking in billions in advertising from the real estate and banking industries as this bubble inflated. I do not believe this is a coincidence. I also don’t believe it was deliberate malfeasance; but you just don’t see lots of tough coverage in media of the people and companies paying the bills.

"This is another journalistic scandal. It’s not quite on the order of the bended-knee, pre-war coverage — stenography of government officials’ lies and deceptions — that helped steer America into the Iraq war, but only because it’s not killing people in large numbers.

It’s a massive enough scandal, though. There’s plenty of pain left in this deflation, possibly including an outright tanking of the economy.

The journalism craft should take a long, hard look at what it’s failed to do, yet again, in the housing bubble. It has failed to warn — as loudly and incessanty as it did in promoting the housing bubble — that a financial crunch was on the way."

Todo el artículo, aquí.