The Nielsen Company has carried out a 52-nation online survey on whether media coverage of the impending recession was adequate. The general consensus among consumers was that the media did not sufficiently inform the public, according to Nielsen Business Media writer Kenneth Hein.

In every region except Latin America, the percent of people who agreed or strongly agreed that media coverage was inadequate outnumbered those who disagreed by 2-to-1. Consumers were most dissatisfied in Europe and North America, with 48 and 51% respectively agreeing that coverage was inadequate. These are the areas which have been hit hardest by the current crisis.

Consumers in Asia Pacific nations were generally less critical of the media over coverage of the crisis and overall the public thought that the media was doing well to provide information about what the issues are and what governments are doing to address them. Even in North America, when asked in a more general sense about the media, 50% said it was "helping me to better understand what governments are doing to solve the problems."

As to why the media might have not given enough warning about the crisis, Nielsen pointed out that some critics have argued that the financial media was too close to those it covered, and added that the speed of events caught everybody by surprise, not only journalists. The question has already been discussed in some depth in the UK, and speaking at Yale University, Financial Times editor Lionel Barber pointed out that journalists should take some responsibility, but explained that the technical financial articles that could have provided some kind of warning were not the sort of stories to quickly go mainstream. At the annual conference of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in April, journalists 'confessed' their errors in reporting the crisis.

Taking the opportunity to blame somebody for such a crisis seems a natural response. Accusing journalists when officials and politicians also failed to see the financial problems coming does not seem justified, but reporters should learn from these events and strive be more aware in the case of a future crisis.

Source: Editor & Publisher