In October, Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post media critic, rounded up the opinions of a few practitioners. Some bravely took the blame (“We all failed,” ventured cnbc’s Charlie Gasparino), but the majority chose to blame the audience: “If we had written stories in late 2000 saying this whole thing’s going to collapse,” said Fortune managing editor Andy Serwer, “people would have said, ‘Ha ha, maybe,’ and gone about their business.” Ditto Marcus Brauchli, a top Wall Street Journal editor during the bubble before taking over last July as executive editor of the Washington Post: “I regret that when I was at the Journal, we didn’t keep the focus on some of these questions, including the possible moral hazard posed by the structure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These are really difficult issues to convey to a popular audience.”

Full Story: Mother Jones

Much more to it than this exceprt – this is mandatory reading.

(via Jay Rosen

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