Banks Are Winning The Intimidation Campaign Against Journalists

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http://www.businessinsider.com/financial-journalism-sometimes-being-responsible-means-pissing-people-off-2012-7

Last week, Gillian Tett of the Financial Times wrote how five years previously, she and her fellow journalists were intimidated into backing off of a huge story about banks manipulating LIBOR. This is the London Interbank Offered Rate set by a poll of leading banks to determine the benchmark interest rate referenced by many home mortgage loans, floating rate notes, collateralized debt obligations, and many other financial instruments:
"At the time, this sparked furious criticism from the British Bankers' Association, as well as big banks such as Barclays; the word "scaremongering" was used. But now we know that, amid the blustering from the BBA, the reality was worse than we thought. As emails released by the UK Financial Services Authority show, some Barclays traders were engaged in a constant and pervasive attempt to rig the Libor market from 2006 on, with the encouragement of more senior managers. And the British bank may not have been alone." ("LIBOR Affair Shows Banking's Big Conceit," June 28, 2012.)
At the heart of the allegations is what appears to be a blasé criminal conspiracy within Barclays. Moreover, Tett is correct. Barclays is far from alone.
Unfortunately, the intimidation was a success. The BBA and Barclays chose their word carefully, because accusing journalists of "scaremongering" suggests they are irresponsible sensationalist hacks. In essence, through lies and intimidation, they threatened to ruin careers.


Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-tavakoli/financial-journalism-some_b_1647093.html#ixzz1zfAhFLRF

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1. 20/20 hindsight ?

I am not familiar with Ms. Tett's journalistic background, but one of the things she seemed to have learned was that: "if asked later, about why you didn't follow up, just say you tried, but were intimidated by outside forces".