New masters of the media universe? I don’t think so.

I couldn’t help but weigh in on the Observer comments thread in response to this frothy article about the new celebrities that are our mainstream financial journalists.

These are people with enormous influence and power. Sadly, they are not helping us much in tackling the feral behaviour of unrestrained and barely regulated international financial markets and banks. They describe the surface of these complex issues but not why nothing is being done politically to change the fundamentals. Don’t be fooled by puff stories about a few bankers’ bonuses – which is deckchairs on the Titanic territory.

To be fair to the reporters highlighted in the Observer piece, it is probably impossible to do these  jobs properly while staying employed in those posts.

I know the tensions involved having been a markets reporter myself from 1997 to 2001, an experience I describe in chapter 3 of Fraudcast News. It was a key part of a reporting experience that led me to conclude that I must quit Reuters to find an alternative journalism model.