Series spreads the blame on economy
COMMENTARY: ON THE MEDIA
Despite criticism that it's anti-Bush, a New York Times series looks at what and who contributed to the country's financial woes. Its detractors are missing the point.
A couple of Sundays ago, the White House erupted with a fury. Spokeswoman Dana Perino accused the New York Times of "gross negligence." Its reporters, she said, let their "myopic point of view" cloud their front-page story on President Bush's role in the mortgage crisis.
A wave of complaints poured into the newspaper. Closer to home, a friend asked me if it wasn't yet another proof of the left-wing media bias. So I thought I'd better take a look.
The 5,000-word article, "White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire," piled a fair amount of blame on the president and his administration for failing to take control as the nation's home loan industry spiraled beyond control.
Such a finding would naturally enrage not only the administration but the tens of millions of our fellow citizens who gorge themselves on talk radio and cable TV, where the bully blusterers serve up a regular diet of rage and blame against Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), other congressional Democrats and those pesky poor folks. (Darn 'em, they want to own homes too!)
I see something else in the furor over the Times' story: An audience that either willfully or honestly misses the point, ignoring what the newspaper reported and reacting with its heart rather than its head.
So here's a little explication on the "Mortgage Bonfire," a story that said both much more and much less than many readers and critics seem to have noticed.
The first and perhaps most important thing to understand about the lengthy investigative piece was that it was the 14th in a series dubbed “The Reckoning.” The stories, now numbering about 20, have held to account individuals and institutions for the economic crisis -- including ineffectual regulators, cash-happy foreign investors and profligate bankers. Democrats and stars of the Clinton administration take unwanted star turns.
Robert E. Rubin, an advisor on President-elect Barack Obama's transition team, is blamed in one story for loosening regulations on banks when he served as President Clinton's Treasury secretary, then pushing Citigroup into investments that would cripple the banking giant.
Henry G. Cisneros, national housing czar under Clinton, takes a hit in another story for pushing an ill-conceived San Antonio, Texas, subdivision that would be ravaged by foreclosure. In one of the tale's most telling moments, a buyer expresses incredulity that the developers let him get a loan.
