very good series in Crikey regarding the very crucial role of...

very good series in Crikey regarding the very crucial role of business journalists
http://www.crikey.com.au/2015/01/09...is-faltering-while-other-investigations-rise/

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The watchdog is the watchdog, you might say, and it is certainly true that debate about the role of business journalists would be very different if there was broad agreement that our corporate regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), was doing its job.
The opposite is true, and the business journalists Crikey spoke to were unanimous in their view that the performance of ASIC has for years been abysmal.ASIC chairman Greg Medcraft’s recent gaffe about Australia becoming a “paradise for white collar criminals” came as a sorry confirmation of journalists’ bitter experience speaking to the victims of fraud about inaction by the regulator. Asks Ben Hills: “For Christ’s sake, whose fault is it? It’s Medcraft condemning his own incompetence.”
Trenchant ASIC critic Michael West told Crikey:
“It’s not a matter of the watchdog missing corporate collapses, they’ve missed the collapse of entire industries. There was something like $15-20 billion blown up in mortgage funds, a generation of wealth was wiped out by the guys from City Pacific, MFS, LM … the only thing that tempers the behaviour of these people is the media, because the regulator has failed so badly. I’ve had angry battles with them for years. I took them [information about] Storm Financial six months before it collapsed. ASIC gave it a ‘clean bill of health’!” ....''

The whole article is a very good insight as to what is happening in the media from the journos perspective. A must read !