The Mediation of Financial Crises Watchdogs, Lapdogs or Canaries in the Coal Mine?

“This crisply written and compelling book does the business press the honour of taking it and its role seriously, giving credit where it is due, acknowledging the challenges it faces, but forthrightly and illuminatingly holding it to account where deserved. And it often is.The book’s historical and comparative approach, comparing coverage of the 2008 crisis to previous modern crises, provides vital context for the press’s buy-in to a deregulatory agenda and other pro-industry assumptions. And by comparing the press’s role in different countries—in the U.S., U.K. and Australia—it exposes how ‘group-think,’ as she rightly calls it, crossed borders and took over Anglo-Saxon newsrooms. And to her great credit, Sophie Knowles gets out into the field to asks the press for its side of the story, through qualitative interviews that add another essential dimension to the analysis.As we continue to struggle through a post-crisis world, Knowles challenges the press to do better—to marshal its formidable resources and talents to puncture the myths that got us here and to help build a more stable future.The Mediation of Financial Crises is a vital contribution to our understanding of the financial press and of the press in general.”—Dean Starkman, Senior Editor, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists; Author, The Watchdog That Didn't Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism
“With the benefit of hindsight, Sophie Knowles is able to look back on the great financial crisis of 2008 to see how little has changed and why we still need investigative journalists to educate the public and hold companies to account.”—Anya Schiffrin, Director of Technology, Media, and Communications, Columbia University, New York
“Well-grounded and solidly illustrated with several case studies, Sophie Knowles provides a powerful indictment about the past history and current state of financial journalism. An incisive account that revisits what have we learnt since the financial meltdown of 2008 that almost brought down the world economy and that has cost years of austerity against the poorest in society. In a time in which financial corporate players are back to many of their ‘esoteric’ greed and unregulated practices, this book presents not only a welcomed reflection but an urgent call for action by those of us who believe in a better and more just society.”—Jairo Lugo-Ocando, Professor, Northwestern University, Qatar