CJR: "The Fed and AIG, Day Two" (NWS; NYT)

We liked the Columbia Journalism Review's Bloomberg post enough to put in on the blog:
"Bloomberg Continues to Lead on the Fed and AIG"

Thank goodness, some news! As we said in this morning's "Unwanted Side Effect: Cocaine Vaccine Leads Addicts to Take 10 Times More Cocaine":

We're long FAS as the market dawdles. Kind of a weird news day.

The FAS is up 6.11% but other than the financials, not much popping.
From the Columbia Journalism Review's The Audit blog:

Here's the rather critical follow-up:

All too often the press seems to want to downplay stories broken by a competitor.

So it’s good to see The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal follow up in a big way on a Bloomberg scoop yesterday that the Federal Reserve told AIG to conceal details of its bailout from the public.

Alas, while the Times at least nods to Bloomberg for being first, the Journal is stingy with the credit. Not cool. Yes, the e-mails in question were leaked by Congressman Darrell Issa to Bloomberg, but they got them first. That’s how it goes.

The Journal doesn’t add much with its second-day story, which reads like a first-day one. The Times does better on that front, spinning it forward somewhat by interviewing experts on whether the Fed and AIG broke the law by withholding material information from public shareholders.

But the NYT does a poor job of giving readers basic info here: who those experts are. It twice paraphrases “others” who take the view that the Fed and AIG did nothing wrong, but doesn’t identify the sources beyond saying “one securities lawyer said” in one instance. That’s not good enough....MORE