An epic takedown of Andrew Ross Sorkin, America's foremost practitioner of the worst form of access "journalism" that is not named Bob Woodward.
So Sorkin is close to his sources, who are also his sponsors. His compensation is tied to the financial performance of his financial news blog empire, which is underwritten by the finance industry. This is a fine example of exactly the sort of twisted incentive structures that led Wall Street firms to produce and sell a lot of toxic debt. In this one limited sense, you might say, DealBook does shed inadvertent light on the inner workings of finance.Too Sycophantic to SucceedWhich is, alas, more than one can say about Sorkin’s book-length efforts to chronicle the 2008 financial collapse. Sorkin went from Wall Street’s favorite reporter to America’s semi-official financial journalist of record thanks mostly to his 2009 book, Too Big to Fail, which narrates the dismal events of the preceding year from the point of view of Wall Street executives and Bush administration officials. Sorkin was reportedly paid $700,000 for it.
The book debuted at number four on the Timesbestseller list, naturally. It was then adapted into an HBO TV movie, starring far-too-attractive all-star actors as the men who stage-managed the response to the great 2008 meltdown. Too Big to Fail was hailed by some reviewers as a definitive account of the financial crisis, but it isn’t that at all. It’s the story of how the people who caused the financial crisis desperately tried to clean up their mess or cashed out and left someone else to clean it up. Sorkin obviously doesn’t do outrage; he barely does context."
Sorkin isn't a reporter, he's a shill.
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