Book Review: The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism, by Dean Starkman

Abstract

Dean Starkman Watchdog That Didn't Bark: Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. 362 pp.Dean Starkman starts with a premise: accountability journalism is the mother's milk of the journalism industry and needed to ensure a healthy democracy. His message resonates loudly and clearly in this book that is must-reading for students aspiring to be investigative or business reporters.Starkman uses the financial collapse from the 2000s to illustrate how a variety of factors contributed to America's leading newsrooms and journalists failing to grasp the enormity of the interconnected banking, lending, and mortgage crises. combined effect was a public leftunaware of the depth of the scandalous problem. Many of them lost their homes and their jobs in the washout.Starkman suggests that the Bush administration's disdain for government regulation of business is a convenient factor to cite in explaining why the crises happened. Yes, President George W. Bush did neuter the oversight agencies that could have stepped in and prevented the collapse that took the American economy with it. But Starkman also notes that the massive layoffs, resignations, and firings in newsrooms small and especially large guaranteed that fewer journalists were doing what they could have been doing-digging. Furthermore, he adds that the lust for clicks as newsrooms began adopting digital-first mentalities contributed to journalists needing to chase stories that valued eyes over minds. Saying that, he acknowledges that in the run up to the collapse-2000 to 2003-journalism did a fine job of detailing what was happening in the financial industry. But from 2004 to 2006, encompassing some of the worst loan practices that would soon become evident, accountability journalism took a backseat to stories fawning over corporate executives, chasing the latest rumors, and reacting to stock price fluctuations. By the time journalists got back to digging in 2007, the seeds of the disaster had been planted and were about to be harvested.Lest you think Starkman is letting President Bush's successor offthe hook, he notes that President Obama and his attorney general must bear primary responsibility for the failure to criminally prosecute anyone connected to what took place in the financial industry (p. 288). That absence of holding someone responsible added to the public's perception that the country's elite political and business people were somehow above the law.What is accountability journalism? It is The Great Story that can trace its roots to the muckraking era of more than 100 years ago, and through to the mythical early 1970s Washington Post reporting on the Nixon administration. It holds those in power responsible for what they have done wrong, it uncovers the corruption linked to them, and it points the finger of guilt to wherever and at whomever it should be. It is also a lengthy process that requires news managers give the reporter time and resources.Not to be forgotten, according to Starkman, is that the public demands accountability reporting with multiple polls in two decades after Watergate finding that public recognized the importance of The Great Story. …