Blame The Media, Again?

Dan Gillmor writes a pretty interesting piece suggesting financial journalists should have played a larger role over the last ten years in warning the country about the looming financial crisis:

"Journalists are notoriously thin-skinned, defensive about even legitimate criticism. But this lapse has been too blatant even for reporters to miss. Two-thirds of financial journalists in a recent survey said the news media "dropped the ball" in the period before the crisis became apparent. (Still, almost none of them assigned the press any responsibility for what has occurred.)"

Gillmor goes on to suggest that the media should play a larger role in warning the country about this and other disasters:

That common practice suggests an opportunity. When we can predict an inevitable calamity if we continue along the current path, we owe it to the public to do everything we can to encourage a change in that destructive behavior.

In practice, this means activism. It means relentless campaigning to point out what's going wrong, and demanding corrective action from those who can do something about it."

Although I like Gilmor's article very much there are some things I'd like to point out:

First, he's overly critical of print media journalists, suggesting their reporting might have been skewed in favor of their advertisers, even though, from my perspective print media journalists (and blog journalists) were much more responsible in reporting about the building bubble than electronic media journalists.

Secondly, he makes no mention of the obvious fact that although financial journalists were far too optimistic five years ago, helping build the bubble, they have also swung too far the other way now and their pessimism might slow the recovery.

I'm very much in favor of activism among journalism, but you have to temper it a good bit, because, sometimes these guys have no clue what they're talking about. If you're going to follow an activist journalist on any issue, it pays to also read another one on the opposite side of the issue so you can forge your own sense of the truth out of the middle.

It should be pointed out that Gilmor himself is a print (and blog) media financial journalist, who made a name for himself writing about the dot.com bubble, but failed to accurately predict its ultimate bursting.

You can read the entirety of Gilmor's article here: The Media's Role In The Financial Crisis

I recommend it, but with the reservations noted above.

Theater Safety: Accidental Shooting in Florida

Tragedy nearly struck during rehearsals for an amateur production of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men in Sarasota, Florida. The actor playing George shot the actor playing Lennie, as per the script, but this time the gun was real and so was the ammunition.

It was an accident, and luckily the bullet didn't penetrate the actor's skull, Incidents like this illustrate the very real need for anybody involved in theatre to really know what they're doing before trying to use potentially dangerous props or equipment.

Here is an article on the incident in Florida.

Here is a good article on using guns on stage.

Below are some books on Stage Safety:

The Pope On YouTube

Twenty-First Century Pope

In a pretty tech-savvy move to reach the flock, Pope Benedict XVI now has his own YouTube Channel. It's even in HD!

From their YouTube Profile:

This channel offers news coverage of the main activities of the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI and of relevant Vatican events.
It is updated daily. Video images are produced by Centro Televisio Vaticano (CTV), texts by Vatican Radio (RV) and CTV.

This video-news presents the Catholic Churchs position regarding the principal issues of the world today.

Links give access to the full and official texts of cited documents.
Holy See (Vatican City State)

Watch the Pope on YouTube here, but be careful about leaving flame comments on his videos. God is watching you.

Peter Schiff is Insane

Peter Schiff gets a lot of credit these days for going on television and predicting the banking collapse of the current recession, even though some other economists missed it. Through his television appearances, Schiff earned the nickname "Dr. Doom" because of his dire predictions.

So, is Schiff the brilliant prognosticator of the future? Not necessarily. Lots of other people saw the current economic crisis coming, especially the housing bubble, they just lacked the desire or the personality to go on television. Yes, some of Schiff's predictions came true, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Before you sell all your belongings and follow Schiff, there are a few things you might want to consider:

He's one tin-foil hat away from being a full blown survivalist, yet he graduated from Berkley. Like Stan Lee says "nuff said".

His father is currently in prison for income tax evasion, not because he's a crook, but because he's a tax protester.

Many of Sciff's investment clients took a beating in 2008. It turns out, hiding your money in Singapore wasn't such a good idea after all.

Sciff follows the Austrian school of economics, or as I like to call it, the "Mad Max" school of economics, whose main tenets are that human beings are too evil and too stupid to ever govern effectively, so the only solution is the thunderdome of absolute laissez-faire.

"Dr. Doom" is a financial adviser for "Dr No." Schiff works for Ron Paul. Birds of a feather flock together, especially when they're both radical libertarians who want to bring down the government.

He was wrong about the dollar and wrong about gold and on his radio show Jan 14, 2009, he said Americans should stock up on guns and ammunition to fight off the wandering hordes of the coming apocalypse. That's just great radio...If you're Art Bell!

Schiff was right that Americans didn't save enough and spent too much on consumer crap made in Asia. Duh! You didn't have to go to Berkley to know that. This has been a known criticism of the American economy far and wide for forty years.

A bear market doesn't make survivalists suddenly brilliant and "right" any more than a bull market means you should invest in rose-colored glasses. A little faith in each other tempered with some common sense will carry you pretty far in this old world. In the mean time, try and avoid the people trying to grab your attention at either end of the pendulum. They're not necessarily all that bright or right.