WORLD NEWS DAY
LUKANYO MNYANDA: Resource and skills gap causes financial journalism to forgo watchdog role
Industry lacks accounting and forensic nous as well as links with potential whistle-blowers
Michael Katz, one of SA’s best-known lawyers and specialists in corporate governance, delivered a speech to Business Day journalists in 2019 in which he described the three most important functions of financial journalists as: performing a watchdog function, assisting investors in making decisions on buying or selling securities, and shaping corporations’ behaviour — all of which enable citizens to make informed judgments about topical issues.
Having become a journalist in a more hopeful era, in the mid- to late 1990s, I recall financial journalists having an elevated status within the industry, the assumption being that they had superior skills that enabled them to report and analyse technical subject matter regarding the economy and financial markets...
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