Following the Money: Journalism and the Economic Crisis
Presenters
- Vanessa Perry
George Washington University
Vanessa Gail Perry, MBA, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the George Washington University School of Business. Her research in consumer financial decision-making, public policy, and the effects of markets on consumers has appeared in the California Management Review, the Journal of Consumer Affairs, and a host of other scholarly publications.
She also has worked as a consultant to public and private sector clients, including the Bank of America, the National Association of Realtors, the IRS, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. She currently serves as an expert on consumer information for the newly formed U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Before joining the faculty at GWU, Professor Perry was a senior economist at Freddie Mac. She holds a B.A. in philosophy from American University, an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis, and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
- Anya Schiffrin
Columbia University
Anya Schiffrin is the director of the media and communications program at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where she has been teaching since 2003.
Schiffrin worked as a financial and business journalist for eight years. A former Knight-Bagehot Fellow, she was a bureau chief at Dow Jones Newswires in Amsterdam and Hanoi and has worked as a reporter in Turkey, Pakistan, Spain and the U.K. She is the editor of several journalism manuals and textbooks. Her most recent book is on the media and the financial crisis. BAD NEWS: How America’s Business Press Missed the Story of the Century was published by the New Press in February 2011.
- Dean Starkman
Columbia Journalism Review
Dean Starkman is chief of “The Audit,” the business-press section of the Columbia Journalism Review, and the magazine's Kingsford Capital Fellow.
A journalist for more than two decades, Starkman was a Wall Street Journal staff writer for eight years on beats including real estate and white-collar crime. He is a former chief of the Providence Journal's investigative unit and helped lead the team that won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Investigations. In 2006, he was named a Katrina Media Fellow with the Open Society Institute. His 2009 essay, "Power Problem," a review of pre-crisis financial reporting, won Mirror (Syracuse), Bart Richards (Penn State) and National Press Club awards for media criticism.
- Joseph E. Stiglitz
Nobel Laureate
Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University, the winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, and a lead author of the 1995 IPCC report, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He was chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisors under President Clinton and chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank from 1997-2000. Stiglitz received the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded biennially to the American economist under 40 who has made the most significant contribution to the subject. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge University, held the Drummond Professorship at All Souls College Oxford, and has also taught at M.I.T, Yale, Stanford, and Princeton. He is the author most recently of Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the Global Economy.
- Chi Chi Wu
Attorney, National Consumer Law Center
Chi Chi Wu is a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, a nonprofit focusing on marketplace justice for low-income consumers. Chi Chi is an expert on consumer credit issues ranging from credit cards to medical debt to fair credit reporting. She is the co-author of the legal manuals Fair Credit Reporting Act and Collection Actions, and a contributing author to Cost of Credit, Truth in Lending, and Credit Discrimination. Chi Chi frequently serves as a resource for media on consumer credit issues.
Chi Chi has previously worked in the Consumer Protection Division at the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office and the Asian Outreach Unit of Greater Boston Legal Services.
Video
Audio
- When
- Friday, April 8, 9:00am - 10:30am
- Where
- Cityview Ballroom
map (pdf) - Track
- Journalism and Public Media
The economic crisis has highlighted a troubling trend in financial journalism, which focuses too much on chasing stocks and cozying up to industry. After the markets unraveled and the economy took a nosedive, reporters raced to cover an unfamiliar cast of characters and a confusing mix of derivatives and toxic financial instruments. In the midst of this meltdown, the business of journalism itself hit the rocks, as the mainstream media grappled with collapsing ad revenues and falling circulation. Did the press fail in its critical role just as the financial industry was undermining the global economy? How do we explain these failures?
