By Hu Shuli

I was, however, in excellent company. For two days, May 11-12, over 1,000 eminent media personalities, including 57 speakers, 11 moderators, and 300 participants from abroad and 600 from the UAE, would gather in Dubai to discuss the role of the business media prior to the global economic crisis. Todd Benjamin, former financial presenter for CNN, would moderate the session, and Martha Hamilton, former Washington Post columnist and business editor and leading figure in the Middle Eastern business news circles, would also be in attendance.

The forum was organized by the Dubai Press Club, under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. I was looking forward to the next two days, as the agenda promised lively debates on topics ranging from the relationship between the media and corporations to the impact of the financial crisis on the media's credibility to lessons learned from the experience.

*   *   *    *   *   *     *   *   *    *   *   *    *   *   *    *   *   *    *   *   *    *   *   *    *   *   *   

On the eve of the forum, Todd, Martha and I gathered in a bar, talking about the speeches we would give the next day. "What mistakes have we in the media made?" Todd asked.

In my opinion, the western media, such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, did well after the onset of the financial crisis. Their responsiveness and range of coverage won my respect. Still, I thought that we could have done better.

Martha agreed. She said that the western media had been preoccupied by the stock market and corporations, whereas more attention should have been paid to other financial markets, such as the bond and derivatives markets.

At the next day's forum, Martha frankly acknowledged the media's insufficient coverage of the crisis. She thought that the media was rightly criticized for its lack of critical analysis of the markets and big corporations.

However, some pointed out that the media was wrongly accused of having missed all warning signals leading up to the crisis. A number of reports from quality western media outlets had actually forecasted the financial crisis and risk in the credit market, most of which had been ignored. According to my friend Craig Smith, former Paris correspondent for The New York Times, many experienced business journalists – including Gretchen Morgenson of The New York Times, Mark Whitehouse and Greg Ip of The Wall Street Journal, and Peter Coy of BusinessWeek – had been sounding the alarm for years, pointing out the great risk of collateralized debt obligations. The media was not remiss; readers had just turned a deaf ear. Craig's opinion received great support during the forum.

Even if the media had failed to print a single cautionary word, would it be fair to blame them? Many presenters in the forum believe that the media's primary task is to deliver information, rather than provide predictions, especially long-term ones.

"This crisis is partly structural and partly cyclical and therefore not easily visible to journalists. Journalism to me is reporting the message that comes out of serious analysis, not speculation," said Malaysian economist Mohamed Ariff, the forum's only non-media attendee.

Many senior media persons also thought that, given the highly complex financial system, few economists, let alone journalists, could predict such a swift, disastrous decline.

"It's not only unrealistic but also unfair to blame the media for failing to forecast the crisis," said Craig.

Arabic attendees raised the issue of the relationship between corporations and the media. I described the "Chinese wall" between Caijing Magazine and its advertisers, which has been in place since Caijing's establishment. Many people later tracked me down to ask for more details and express their admiration.

U.S. media outlets, such as CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times, would never be afraid of being charged with colluding with big companies. The media is a huge industry, the financing of which has been independent for over a century. Although traditional media is declining today, journalistic integrity has already been solidly established.

But Martha also admitted that sometimes economic reporters are afraid of offending their sources, which would not be a concern with political reporting.

As for the Chinese media, how have they done in this crisis stemming from the US? Caijing Magazine has devoted much time and human resources to cover the story since the summer of 2007. However, previously, we indeed overestimated Wall Street's risk management and supervision capabilities.

In my speech, I argued that business media should not only deliver relevant information about financial activities but also play the role of a watchdog. Caijing Magazine and Caijing.com are firmly rooted in this belief. We think that business media should maintain its independence and bravely tell the truth. Instead of telling the readers what they want to know, we should tell them what they should know. We believe this deeply and act accordingly. As such, one third of our material and human resources are devoted to investigative reporting, focusing on market manipulation, misleading information, insider trading and other forms of corruption. We think that crony capitalism is a major threat to the Chinese economy and pride ourselves on our muckraking reports on collusion between government officials and businessmen.

During the forum, we reached the consensus that the business media should strengthen investigative reporting, and corporations and the government should be more transparent to allow for better media surveillance.

This is a crisis of unprecedented complexity and impact. There's no use in blaming each other. What we should do is to confront it.

Hu Shuli is the editor of Caijing

All opinions expressed in this blog are those of  the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Caijing Magazine.