Are The NY Times and Other Major Business Media Risking a Credibility Disaster?
Many news outlets, most notably the NY Times, now have policies that effectively allow Wall Street analysts to use the work of independent advisors like myself without attribution. The rationale is that citing big advertisers like Lehman Brothers is ok, even if they are clearly using the work of others. It is really quite astonishing and probably explains why I get so many comments asking “what’s going on at the Times?” Significant media pieces are even starting to appear that substantiate this problem. One need only review the archive of the NY Times leading reporters and match it to my archive to see a very consistent pattern of using the material without sufficient attribution. This is not to fault the reporters who have also been pigeon holed into certain “beats” which greatly impairs their ability to cooperate and improve the overall quality of the paper’s reporting. This lack of coordination also makes it easy for the Times managment to justify not doing a particular story. For e
