Crappy "finanshul" journalism

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DrMoriarty

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Am I just becoming more curmudgeonly, or is this a new low in what passes these days for 'financial comment', 'round Abbey Street?

If it was a Leaving Cert/1st year undergraduate essay, I'd fail it purely on grounds of incoherence/mixed metaphors/generally poor style/lack of meaningful content. But — like I said — is it just me? Leaving literary considerations completely aside, does this make sense to anyone else here?

[Edit: I post this without having the faintest idea who the author is.]
 
On 7 July the Wall Street Journal had a major article on page 1 "Wearing of the Green Irish Subsidiary Lets Microsoft slash Taxes in U.S. and Europe"

The arrticle is a rant about the tax rates in Ireland and how major firms such as Microsoft Google etc are electing to pay taxes in Ireland rather than elsewhere.

given the copyright issues i won't post the article. I can pm it to you if you want.



Murt
 
I wouldn't like to comment on the literary content as having barely passed english in the leaving cert (as it did not involve any numbers)

But there is a lot of sense in the article
It is simialr to the arguement about artistic royalties
This "income" is very transportable and if taxed in any way unfavourable is very transient

Look at re-insurance
Hoe many reinsurance companies are located outside of low tax jurisdictions

Probably none of the real big ones
The reason being that the management/satff required to run these businesses is minimal and therefore can be moved around the world to suit the shareholders/investors requriements

There is also no way of combating these arrangements as there is always a legal and financial reason to st up a business in any "low-tax" jurisdiction as required

stuart@buyingtolet.ie
 
I'd agree with you Dr. M, mainly because i'm fed up with the Indo fullstop, but also for your stated reasons. A quick analysis of the article suggests to me:

1) Its meerly a re-hashing of information published in more reputable places - it tells nothing new (althought re-hashing information is what newspapers do.)
2) The language... ranges from a few excellent sentences ("Separately, the European Commission has published proposals for the harmonisation of the European corporate tax base, effectively standardising the way tax is calculated across the EU")... to awkward colloquial terminology ("we were still the men from the bog who desperately needed a fresh "leg up"...The Germans won't leave it alone...They will keep coming after us on this issue...The Americans are big boys")
3) The choice of words/adjectives follows the Indos new style guide - sensational and tabloid - "desperately...massive...fantastic...massive [again]....biggest...richest...richest [again]...."
4) Some of the comments are bias and undoubtably off the point -"richest economy in the world, which spends $1bn per day on defence."
5) Some of the comments/"facts" are misleading/questionable - "the richest economy in the world" - true in absolute terms... but in fairer measures - per capita GDP/GNP etc., it's not. ...Eastern Europe are already offering Corporation Tax deals that are lower than ours. - again very misleading, we still have the lowest corporation tax in Europe - yes the author uses the term "deals" - but the IDA have been offering "deals" for years ranging from paying for capital investment (factories) to training costs.

DrMoriarty said:
If it was a Leaving Cert/1st year undergraduate essay, I'd fail it purely on grounds of incoherence/mixed metaphors/generally poor style/lack of meaningful content.
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As you may know, i'm a LC student and I agree fully with you on this - I assure you if I were to show this to my teacher he would tear it apart in an instant.
 
In general the business pages seem to be a training ground for young pup journos, although things are a lot better now than a few years ago.
 
The article doesn't strike me as particularly good or bad.

I have criticized journalists in the past but since then, I have written for a few papers including the Indo. It's not easy for me and I am just an occasional writer. It must be more difficult to come in each day and have to produce some meaningful and fresh article for the following day's paper and pass the high standards of the critics on Askaboutmoney.

A suggestion Dr.M. Why not write a piece of the highest financial and literary quality and submit it for publication? They would be genuinely glad to receive it.

Brendan
 
Brendan said:
It must be more difficult to come in each day and have to produce some meaningful and fresh article for the following day's paper
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Well, isn't this what journalists are supposed to do? Irish newspapers aren't cheap. We have a right to expect reasonable standards of journalism. You get the impression that some so-called financial journalists don't understand the concepts that they are writing about.
 
Brendan said:
A suggestion Dr.M. Why not write a piece of the highest financial and literary quality and submit it for publication?
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Maybe I will, some day...
Too busy marking crappy undergraduate essays at the moment!
 
DrMoriarty said:
Maybe I will, some day...
Too busy marking crappy undergraduate essays at the moment!
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Maybe you could submit one of those. Given comments above, that would have as good a chance to get published as any of the "professionals" work.

I'm of the opinion that Irish journalism is very very poor at the moment. There's not a single Sunday newspaper I would even buy at the moment.
 
I didn't have time to read the whole Indo article but the start of it seems awful and is a bit of a struggle to carry on with.

The Sunday Business Post is a good paper, do you read it?
 
annR said:
The Sunday Business Post is a good paper, do you read it?
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This is the only paper I'd buy semi-regularly. But it too suffers from lazy journalism in my opinion as well.

And it's no longer a business paper. Hasn't been for a while.
 
Hi Brendan,

It must be more difficult to come in each day and have to produce some meaningful and fresh article for the following day's paper and pass the high standards of the critics on Askaboutmoney.
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Perhaps we could apply the same standard to other professions?

What sets a Journalist (Reporter) apart from other professionals in the public eye? If a professional musician gives a dreadful performance do we just shrug and say "shes got a difficult job to do" and advice critics "to take up singing"?

There are brilliant competent journalists out there and there are lazy incompetent ones.

Here on AAM we should actively challenge lazy and incompetent journalism especially as it applies to matters of personal finance.

ajapale
 
I think the SBP has too much 'promotional' type articles, genrally for business start-ups. They also advertise on Today FM as having Ireland's best/largest property section, nothing wrong with property, but hardly a way to differentiate a business paper from any other paper?

FWIW, I think the business in the Sunday Times is pretty good. I like the Irish Times on a Friday (lot of tech stuff as well as business). Both have a good page on a particular aspect of personal finance each week, e.g credit cards etc., and both also contain 'Best buy' lists.
 
Actually, those are the only two papers I buy in hard copy (as opposed to just scanning the headlines online). The ST is an awful 'Murdoch rag' in many ways, but the quality of the journalism is pretty good by comparison with the likes of the Sindo et al. Jill Kerby in the 'Money' section, Liam Fay's well-placed sneerings on the back page, and the Culture section with the week's Beeb schedules make it worth €1.80 - even when there isn't a free DVD thrown in!

ronan_d_john, I'd love to submit one of those student essays but, given that they're mostly about 'french litratshur/cultshur' (or whatever), I doubt the Indo would be too interested...
 
€1.80? In B.A.C. it's €2.10!

I don't think much of the main part of the Sunday Times, alright, it's pretty crap.
 
DrMoriarty said:
Actually, those are the only two papers I buy in hard copy (as opposed to just scanning the headlines online). The ST is an awful 'Murdoch rag' in many ways,
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And hence the reason I won't buy it.

DrMoriarty said:
but the quality of the journalism is pretty good by comparison with the likes of the Sindo et al. Jill Kerby in the 'Money' section, Liam Fay's well-placed sneerings on the back page,
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I would probably differ with you on that as I've seen a few instances of very lazy journalism in this newspaper as well - poorly researched articles are unforgiveable, especially when the right info is actually on the web and journalists don't even need to speak to anyone.

DrMoriarty said:
ronan_d_john, I'd love to submit one of those student essays but, given that they're mostly about 'french litratshur/cultshur' (or whatever), I doubt the Indo would be too interested...
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Try this. Put a financial type heading on the top of the article and then submit it. You'll at least get a call back.
 

Agree fully, i've been buying the Sunday Times for the past year for the business section and have recently started buying the Irish Times on a Friday for its business supplement. Must say, switching to these two caused a riot in my house! My dad can't stand the ST because he reckons its sports coverage is dreadful (he's right)... but he has given up trying to 'force' me to buy the Sindo since the whole Lawlor affair.
 
CGorman said:
Must say, switching to these two caused a riot in my house! My dad can't stand the ST because he reckons its sports coverage is dreadful (he's right)... but he has given up trying to 'force' me to buy the Sindo since the whole Lawlor affair.
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I have to say that I really like the sports in the Sunday Times. Comprehensive, some journalists are full of crap, but in general I think it's quite good.
 
What sets a Journalist (Reporter) apart from other professionals in the public eye?
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Hi AJ

The problem is "news". On Askaboutmoney we are nerdy enough to enjoy discussing and debating financial issues. Most people are not interested in financial news. The journalists have to keep on trying to come up with interesting business stories. In most other professions this is not a challenge, although they have other challenges.

Jill Kerby was on holidays recently. I was invited to write the "comment" column for the Sunday Times that week. My brief was that I had to have a piece written by Wednesday afternoon on personal finance issues that arose over the weekend and early that week. It was not easy. But for me it was a once off. I was able to write something. Think about it. Polish it a bit. And I had it ready on time. I would not like to have to do it every week.

Here is a challenge. Why don't a group of us on Askaboutmoney actually produce a personal finance column for a Sunday Paper some weekend. We can open a separate forum for the experiment and with access restricted to the three people involved and mabye a fourth as an editor. We would have an online editorial meeting on the Monday and have to have 3 or 4 interesting articles ready for the publication on the Friday.

Just to make it more difficult we will choose a weekend in December when financial news is quiet.

Any volunteers?

Brendan
 
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