Thursday, April 9, 2009

The Press Buries the TARP Overseer’s Report

From the Columbia Journalism Review's Audit blog (column?):

The press has given short shrift to an important report by the Congressional Oversight Panel on the government’s bailout efforts.

I can’t quite figure out why. It’s got the requisite elements for a well-played story: news, credibility, conflict, broad interest—and it pushes for transparency, something that should be of deep interest to the media. But the Washington Post ran a brief wire story online only, the Journal gave its wire story 220 words, and the NYT didn’t bother. It got little pickup in other papers, either.

Bloomberg gives it a little run. Tell me if this is worth a story, from the wire service’s lede:

A congressional panel overseeing the U.S. financial rescue suggested that getting rid of top executives and liquidating problem banks may be a better way to solve the economic crisis.

Sounds juicy to me! Further:

The Congressional Oversight Panel, in a report released yesterday, also said the Treasury may be relying on too rosy an economic scenario to guide its $700 billion bailout, and declared that the success of the program after six months is “mixed.”

The panel’s chief, Harvard Law prof Elizabeth Warren, is pushing Treasury to give more information to the public on what it’s doing with our money:>>>MORE