Category Archives: Media watch

Pension Fund Pressure to Have a Say in Executive Pay

Wonder why the Financial Times seems to do a consistently better job of reporting on topics that are inconvenient to American executives, like institutional investors taking serious steps to rein in their compensation, that the US media outlets covering the same beat, like the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Bloomberg? This story […]

The Next Type of CEO Scandal

We’ve had accounting fraud, pay that seldom bears any relation to performance, and options backdating. And it appears we aren’t done yet. The next bit of CEO malfeasance that is getting a bit more press is that CEOs are working in concert with private equity firms to buy the companies they head on the cheap. […]

Predictably, the Journal Doth Protest (Global Warming Edition)

The Wall Street Journal’s editors have weighed in with their objections to the first of four reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued last week. And predictably, they dispute the work of 2000 scientists from 113 countries by claiming the “full scientific report” due out in May undercuts the “short policy report” issued […]

The Pollyanna Economy

Readers may have noticed that we have a soft spot in our heart for negative news about the economy. That’s because the business and popular press dwell on the postive and give short shrift to the other side (with the exception of the Financial Times). So we have a tense geopolitical climate, global warming looking […]

"Scientists Offered Cash to Dispute Climate Study"

The attack on the UN’s Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change, which issued its dire first of four reports on February 2 (see today’s earlier post for details) began even before the report was issued. We found this story in the Guardian, thanks to Brad DeLong’s blog, Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Scientists and economists have […]

Initial Responses to UN Global Warming Report

As you doubtless know by now, on February 2, the UN issued the first of four reports due out this year by the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change. The paper, six years in the making, draws on the work of over 2000 highly respected climate scientists from 113 countries. And the conclusions are pretty unambiguous: […]

The Journal Beats the Financial Times for a Change, on the Frothy Chinese Stock Market

We have been hard on the Journal for its tendency to politicize news coverage and omit stories that point to systemic financial risk. So we would like to give credit to the Journal when credit is due. This morning, the Wall Street Journal had a first page story on the stock market mania in China, […]

WSJ vs. FT on Shareholder Democracy

There is a widespread belief in the US that editorializing in the Wall Street Journal is limited to the editorial page. We’ve seen in the past that this just ain’t so (see posts of January 12 and January 16). And today we have a doozy. We have a real news event, reported as the lead […]

Economist Writers Argue That Emergency Room Care Really Isn’t Costly

One of the dangers of blogging is that it is easy to shoot from the hip, so I hope I am not guilty of responding in kind to a remarkably fact-devoid post from the Economist’s Free Exchange. This post, which argues that the savings of having a health care system that substitutes preventive care for […]

Underreporting of Proposals for US Market Reforms

What is and isn’t fair reporting is very much in the eye of the beholder. However, it seems odd that a story that the Financial Times thought important enough to run on its first page has gotten no play in the US: Democrats look to boost investor rights Signs are emerging of a Democratic effort […]

NY Fed Speech on Asset Prices and Income Disparity Under (and Mis) Reported in the US

OK, so it was only a speech by the president of the New York Fed, Tim Geithner, to the Council on Foreign Relations. But the disparity in reporting between the Financial Times, both in placement and content, and the Wall Street Journal (and to some degree Bloomberg) is striking. Not surprisingly, the WSJ downplayed the […]

Is the Blogsphere Influencing the SEC?

Dealbreaker.com thinks so, and links to a Reuters story to bloster their view. You be the judge: Totally terrifying thought. But not beyond the range of the barely credible. We’ve written a lot about SEC regulation. And sometimes it did seem as if the SEC was listening. After we celebrated the court decision striking down […]

On the Accuracy of Wall Street Journal Editorials

In case any of you felt the misguided impulse to come to the defense of the Wall Street Journal’s editors (see our post of December 24), consider Eric Alterman’s commentary on the paper’s redesign: Letters to the editor have been moved off the editorial page to page B10 or 11. Normally I wouldn’t mind this, […]