Thank you for sharing this most thought provoking post. Your point above: “Journalists would serve their audiences best if they reported as many informed perspectives as possible, rather than spew out their too often misinformed and biased opinions about the companies and subjects they supposedly objectively cover.” speaks to scope creep journalists have taken upon themselves. I wholeheartedly agree with your viewpoint, and believe that the public interest would be best served by journalists improving the transparency of current affairs.

As a auditor and a fraud examiner, I’ve been frustrated by difficulty auditors have in remaining independent from management. Unlike journalists who are not paid by management, auditors must in some way bend to the will of management in order to get next year’s audit. This lack of independence existed before SarbOx, and nothing in the new regulations changed that essential shortcoming in the auditing business model.

The source of the ethical problems evidenced by Lehman, Enron, etc., stem from the difficulty of assigning risks and rewards among various stakeholders: shareholders, employees, customers, management. With management controlling the board, the rewards generally are given to management, with the risks absorbed by shareholders, customers and employees.

Our best bet in restoring public trust would be to change the composition of corporate boards. In a perfect world, boards would be independent of management. That way, when auditors are hired directly by the audit committee, independence is built-in. No more shared roles of CEO and Chairman. Board directors would not be selected based on connections, but rather by search firms. I’d add another improvement to the SarbOx rules on board composition by suggesting that more than one financial expert be empaneled on the board.

Well, we can’t solve the problems of the world in just one day, but it is my sincere hope that significant changes are made to restore public trust, and conversations that you initiate on the web are a great way to start!

Tnank you for sharing this illuminating post from your guest contributor, Eric Starkman. It is of great interest generally, on the subject of journalism, and of great interest particularly, to all of us in the blogosphere, as we watch (and to varying degrees, participate in) the continued evolution of journalism, including “citizen journalism,” print and online journalism, blogging, tweeting, et al.

With respect to the field of auditing, specifically, similar to commenter #1 above, I can also see some interesting parallels between some of the things being said about journalism these days, and things being said about auditors. For example, substitute “auditing” for “jouralism” and “auditors” for “journalists” in the blurb below, excerpted from the website of the Committee of Concerned Journalists (CCJ) (specifically, the “CCJ History” page: http://www.concernedjournalists.org/about_ccj/history ) an organization I learned of in your guest post above.

“On a rainy Saturday in June 1997, twenty-five journalists gathered at the Harvard Faculty Club. Around the long table sat editors of several of the nation’s top newspapers, as well as some of the most influential names in television and radio, several of the top journalism educators, and some of the country’s most prominent authors. They were there because they thought something was seriously wrong with their profession. They barely recognized what they considered journalism in much of the work of their colleagues. Instead of serving a larger public interest, they feared, their profession was damaging it.The public, in turn, increasingly distrusted journalists, even hated them. And it would only get worse.”

I think there have always been a range of views on the practical aspects of expecting auditors to fulfill a ‘public interest’ vs. fulfill a professional duty in terms of the work they provide, how they are compensated, by whom they are compensated, etc. And these issues are now seeping into the journalism field as well, in terms of decisions on erecting pay-per-view type firewalls by news organizations ranging from the NYT and FT to independent or quasi-independent bloggers, and what the role of ‘news organizations’ and ‘journalists’ are.

Thanks again for including this fascinating guest post in your blog, it is very interesting to read guest contributors among your always lively posts.

“the myriad factors that continue to erode its once-vaunted credibility. Chief among them is, of course, that the field is rife with unethical individuals who fabricate and plagiarize, a trend I wrote about last May.”..