Can Business Journalism Save the World?: Michael Hogan

Andrew Ross Sorkin, Niall Ferguson, Bethany McLean, Bryan Burrough, and moderator Michael Lewis at last night’s Vanity Fair/Bloomberg discussion, “Covering the Crisis.” Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Can business journalism save the world? Or, to be a bit less grandiose about it: Should business writers concern themselves first and foremost with telling great stories or with educating the public. For Niall Ferguson, the Scottish-born Harvard historian who discovered the subject of finance while investigating the causes of Hitler’s rise in Germany, writing about bank balance sheets is almost a holy mission. The fate of Planet Finance, as he called it in this 2008 article for Vanity Fair, is simply too important to leave in the hands of deeply biased participants. The public must be alerted. The arcane details of high finance must be explained and exposed.

A worthy goal, to be sure, but Ferguson’s fellow participants in last night’s Vanity Fair/Bloomberg panel discussion, “Covering the Crisis,” shied away from such high-minded ambitions. As veterans of deadline-oriented news organizations, Bryan Burrough, Bethany McLean, and Andrew Ross Sorkin sounded content to tell great stories (as long as they’re true). And, as Burrough put it, “Bad guys and failure make the best stories.”

This philosophical divide enlivened last night’s conversation, which was co-hosted by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter and Bloomberg TV chief Andy Lack and moderated by V.F. contributing editor Michael Lewis (who, it must be said, seemed to side with the storytellers). All five writers are either regular or occasional contributors to Vanity Fair, but their willingness to go head-to-head was a timely reminder that business journalism, when it’s done right, is a full-contact sport.

Ferguson was more critical of everyone from the banks (which should be broken up, he said) to the regulators (whose inaction is so stunning, in his view, that it virtually proves they are in Wall Street’s pocket). The reporters, who probably spend less time “looking at bank balance sheets and worrying,” as Ferguson put it, and more time talking with the grunts on the ground, were a bit more forgiving of the Street’s failures. McLean, a V.F. contributing editor who is best known for breaking the Enron story at Fortune, said she learned early on that “even in white-collar crime, it’s rarely one guy alone in a dark room thinking, How am I going to screw my investors?” And when Lewis asked Sorkin to confirm that his new book, Too Big to Fail, paints Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner as a “fool” who let Wall Street “fleece the U.S. government,” Sorkin replied that the book is open to interpretation. He added that one reader had told him she hated Dick Fuld after reading it, and another said she had cried out of sympathy for him. (Lewis couldn’t resist ribbing the 32-year-old Sorkin: “I can’t let this go,” he said. “Women are stopping you on the street?”)

The academy-newsroom split was perhaps most pronounced when talk turned to what the government could have done to avert the crisis. The reporters seemed to accept Wall Street’s complaint that “nobody saw this coming,” but Ferguson wasn’t buying it. “Let’s not forget that I published my book [2008’s The Ascent of Money] before the crisis,” he exclaimed, before describing the frustration he felt as his warnings were “ritually ignored and even laughed at.” He added that it was perfectly clear in late 2007 that a global bailout should have been arranged. But the reporters expressed deep skepticism that such a move would have been politically feasible. “No one had the political capital to get that done,” said Burrough, who went on to offer a theory why the federal government has essentially dropped the matter of investigating Wall Street. “Congress likes shows. Unless you can bring in some Goldman guys and throw pies in their faces, they’re not interested.”

The question-and-answer session, moderated by Bloomberg TV’s Margaret Brennan, was as provocative as one might expect, given the high-powered audience of journalists (PBS’s Charlie Rose, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, Discovery’s Paula Zahn) and investors (Blackstone’s Peter Rose, Greenlight’s David Einhorn, Pershing Square Capital Management’s Bill Ackman, and Third Point’s Daniel Loeb). Brennan made news when she called on Morgan Stanley C.E.O. John Mack to ask whether he thought the media’s coverage of the crisis was fair. “By and large,” he replied, though he singled out one report from last fall—suggesting that Mitsubishi was wavering in its decision to make a $9 billion capital investment in the bank—as “absolute bullshit.” He also surprised many in the room by expressing his affection for increased federal scrutiny of his firm’s operations. “We have probably 15 to 20 Fed regulators in our building 24 hours a day,” he said. “They question everything we do. I’ve never been regulated like that before. It’s a different environment. Someone said to me, ‘What do you think of it?’ I love it.” (Watch a video clip of Mack’s response.)

In the end, the professor and the ink-stained wretches seemed to agree on the basics: a second Great Depression had been averted, but the crisis we had was plenty awful; the government’s actions had been deeply compromised by the bizarre notion that no creditor should lose a single cent; and the eagerness on the part of the political class to move on to more digestible (and polarizing) subjects like health-care reform is a puzzling and dangerous development.

The work of covering this crisis is not over yet.

Graydon Carter introduces the moderator.
McLean gives Burrough a sidelong glance.
Brennan and Sorkin, who would go on to debate whether 24-hour TV coverage had contributed to the financial crisis or merely reflected it.
Paula Zahn chooses caffeine over cocktails.
Ferguson listens as Sorkin makes a point.
Lewis, Burrough, and Ferguson pal around backstage.
Skepticism and amusement.
For once, Charlie Rose isn’t the one asking questions.
Morgan Stanley C.E.O. John Mack speaks out.
Bloomberg TV’s Andy Lack enjoys another successful event.