Spain: Business journalism needs to look for a new model

At the newsXchange 2008 conference in Valencia, a new business model for business reporting has been urged. At the conference, British journalist and founder of the Work Foundation (the former Industrial Society), Will Hutton said, "We take the truth as handed down by the business elite, especially in the US... There is an obligation to be tougher in the questions we ask."

Duncan Stanworth of BBC Monitoring reports that Hutton also said, "All of us, including journalists, suspended our judgment and we are paying the price."

Media outlets had been mouthpieces for "neoconservative, neoliberal" pro-deregulation economists over the last 15 years, said Jeremy Rifkin of the Foundation on Economic Trends.

Al-Jazeera TV political analyst Marwan Bishara said the crisis heralded a time for "soul searching" among journalists. "How far are we in bed with power?" he asked.

Onno Ruding from the Centre for European Policy Studies said, "Journalists should devote time to longer-term matters and seek the views of two or three sides. Select those voices and give them a wider audience." Ruding went on to say that there was a risk of going from the "extreme optimism" of the boom years to "eternal depression".



Source: BBC Monitoring research 21 November 2008