The global financial crisis has all the hallmarks of an absoutely terrible news story. Unless you happen to be an economics wonk it's just not interesting that the distant, shadowy figures who run some banks and government agencies have moved incomprehensibly vast sums of money around in ways that are, to the casual observer, barely different to the ways in which they were moving incomprehensibly vast sums of money around before. And yet, even to the casual observer, it's evident that the collapse of the global economy is probably a Bad Thing and you should be very (very) scared. So Dan Froomkin makes a very fair point - that no-one in the mainstream media is really covering the latest developments in foreclosuregate.
Foreclosuregate is a criminal conspiracy to systematically defraud, carried out by banks and their agents and hastily covered up by governments, and it has created the biggest economic crisis in living memory. The perpetrators are back running banks that by any sensible definition are insolvent, they are taking home seven figure bonuses for doing so, and in the UK the Chancellor has just announced a new age of austerity that will only make the problem worse.
The challenge here for the news media is to make the biggest story in the world - and make no mistake, right now this is the biggest story in the world - interesting and comprehensible enough for people to talk about. Interesting and comprehensible enough to run on every front page. Interesting and comprehensible enough that readers - voters, citizens, you know, that third estate that the fourth allegedly exists to watch out for - can understand and debate it and raise it with their representatives. At Nieman Watchdog Dan Frooman has achieved this; you can read here what's going on. But not everyone reads Nieman Watchdog. I want to see this covered by NYT, WSJ, the BBC. I don't see it yet.
It's not surprising that this is a challenge that, so far, journalism has comprehensively ducked. A story that is dull, incomprehensible and terrifying is a very hard story to run. But this is what we have journalism for. This is why people train for years and practice for more years at the craft of explaining the news, and the importance of the news, to readers. If journalism cannot do this, if it cannot meet this challenge and solve this difficult problem, then journalism simply doesn't work.
(Image © Copyright John Went and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)
