The Watchdog That Didn T Bark

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

Looks at the reasons why the mainstream media didn't see 2008's financial crisis coming.

The shocking reexamination of the failures of US government officials to use available intelligence to stop the attack on American on September 11, 2001. “The authors lay bare…an intelligence failure of historic proportions.”—John Kiriakou, former CIA officer, author, The Convenient Terrorist In 2009, documentarians John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski arrived at the offices of Richard Clarke, the former counterterror adviser to Presidents Clinton and Bush. In the meeting, Clarke boldly accused one-time Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet of “malfeasance and misfeasance” in the pre-war on terror. Thus began an incredible—never-before-told—investigative journey of intrigue about America’s intelligence community and two 9/11 hijackers. The Watchdogs Didn’t Bark details that story, unearthed over a ten-year investigation. Following the careers of a dozen counterterror employees working in different agencies of the US government from the late 1980s to the present, the book puts the government’s systems of oversight and accountability under a microscope. At the heart of this book is a mystery: Why did key 9/11 plotters Khalid Al Mihdhar and Nawaf Al Hazmi, operating inside the United States, fall onto the radars of so many US agencies without any of those agencies succeeding in stopping the attacks? The answers go beyond mere “conspiracy theory” and “deep state” actors, but instead find a complicated set of potential culprits and an easily manipulated system. Taking readers on a character-driven account of the causes of 9/11 and how the lessons of the attacks were cynically inverted to empower surveillance of citizens, kidnapping, illegal imprisonment, torture, government-sanctioned murder, and a war on whistleblowers and journalists, an alarm is raised which is more pertinent today than ever before.

Perhaps no other function of a free press is as important as the watchdog role—its ability to monitor the work of the government. It is easier for politicians to get away with abusing power—wasting public funds and making poor decisions—if the press is not shining its light with what is termed “accountability reporting.” This need has become especially clear in recent months, as the American press has come under virulent direct attack for carrying out its watchdog duties. Upending the traditional media narrative that watchdog accountability journalism is in a long, dismaying decline, The Watchdog Still Barks presents a study of how this most important form of journalism came of age in the digital era at American newspapers. Although the American newspaper industry contracted significantly during the 1990s and 2000s, Fordham professor and former CBS News producer Beth Knobel illustrates through empirical data how the amount of deep watchdog reporting on the newspapers’ studied front pages generally increased over time despite shrinking circulations, low advertising revenue, and pressure to produce the kind of soft news that plays well on social media. Based on the first content analysis to focus specifically on accountability journalism nationally, The Watchdog Still Barks examines the front pages of nine newspapers located across the United States to paint a broad portrait of how public service journalism has changed since 1991 as the advent of the Internet transformed journalism. This portrait of the modern newspaper industry shows how papers of varying sizes and ownership structures around the country marshaled resources for accountability reporting despite significant financial and technological challenges. The Watchdog Still Barks includes original interviews with editors who explain why they are staking their papers’ futures on the one thing that American newspapers still do better than any other segment of the media: watchdog and investigative reporting.

Some dogs have a bark bigger than their bite. But Sweetie, The Great Dane, can't afford to bark -- or bite. After three little nips and three masters, the next stop is the pound. So when the burglar comes calling, he waves his tail. When coyotes come prowling, he tries to make peace -- as they howl in scorn. They promise they'll return -- to eat his food, his friends, Red the Irish Setter, Poky the Beagle, and Sweetie for dessert! If Sweetie can't protect them they'll all perish! How can he outfox twelve hungry coyotes?

-- Scott L. Althaus, Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics

"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.

This anthology of the year's best investigative business writing explores the secret dealings of an elite Wall Street society and uncovers the crimes and misadventures of the young founder of Silk Road, the wildly successful online illegal goods site known as the "eBay of vice." It reveals how the Fed dithered while the financial crisis unfolded and explains why the leaders of a two-trillion-dollar bond fund went to war with each other. Articles from the best newspapers and magazines in the country delve into how junk-food companies use science to get you to eat more and how Amazon dodges the tax man how J.Crew revitalized itself by transforming its creative process and Russell Brand went deep on media and marketing after his GQ Awards speech went haywire. Best Business Writing 2014 includes provocative essays on the NFL's cover-ups and corporate welfare, Silicon Valley's ultralibertarian culture, and the feminist critique of Sheryl Sandberg's career-advice book for women, Lean-In. Stories about toast, T-shirt making, and the slow death of the funeral business show the best writers can find worthy tales in even the most mundane subjects.