The Watchdog That Didn't Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism

"Starkman’s book is great. He focuses on the story of the financial collapse and asks why we didn’t see it coming. He explains that a lot of business reporting is what he calls ‘access reporting.’ A lot of business reporting is very quick, it’s aimed at investors, and it is often telling the stories of elites for elites. He talks about the difficulties of supporting ‘accountability journalism,’ the public affairs reporting that we’ve been talking about. He argues that there was less ‘accountability journalism,’ relative to the ‘access journalism,’ leading up to the financial collapse because that type of work takes a lot of time and effort. People don’t want to say ‘we had a great quarter this period because we engaged in fraudulent transactions.’ So he talks about the difficulties of financial reporting and the difficulties of holding institutions accountable. One of the reasons I love this book is because it is anchored in a particular topic, it outlines what was covered and what was overlooked. In a world of rational ignorance, where there is a gap between what you need to know and what you want to know, how do you get the stories told that are expensive but that are necessary to hold institutions accountable? I address this question in my book, Democracy’s Detectives, in the last chapter, “Algorithms and Accountability . ” First there are policy levers. The Freedom of Information Act, which just turned fifty in July, needs to be fully implemented. A new bill was passed to strengthen FOIA. If implemented, it will lower the cost of telling the news we need to know. Also, right now the US government sponsors a lot of research and development related to the environment, education, and national defense but purposefully does not fund much research into journalism. If journalism was acknowledged as a source of market failure, resources could be directed toward developing content-neutral and platform-agnostic tools to help journalists. And, it would be great if the Internal Revenue Service would make it easier for online public affairs new sites to earn nonprofit status. Another way to nurture investigative journalism is through the evolution of the field of computational journalism. Better use of data and algorithms will lower the cost of discovering stories. Additionally, computational journalism can help you tell stories in more personalized and engaging ways. If you had a news site that knew you as well as Amazon knows you, knew whether you liked documents or video, knew if you like hard news or human interest, if that site offered you a differentiated way of understanding the news, that product differentiation would be something that you would pay for. Internet news is tough to charge for because if facts are available elsewhere, people can get an easy substitute for what you’re offering. Computational journalism can develop techniques for personalization and engagement, to create a product that news consumers are willing to pay for, because it isn’t replicated everywhere on the internet. Computational journalism will lower the cost of discovering stories, because finding stories is always like drilling for oil. Better data and algorithms can help. But also, on the demand side, computational journalism can help you tell stories in a more engaging way. An example might be virtual reality. Right now, if you discover facts other people can use them; facts cannot be copyrighted. But if you produce a piece of virtual realty that can be copyrighted, that makes it harder for people to appropriate your work. If you can tell a story in a more engaging way, you have a higher chance of monetizing it, which will support public affairs reporting."