Center for Citizen Media Rotating Header Image

Neglecting to Mention That Other Mortgage-Meltdown Villain

Howard Kurtz, in his Washington Post “Media Notes Extra,” has an appropriate caution for journalists:

Memo to the media: Everyone who is defaulting on a home mortgage is not necessarily a victim.

He points out that people who took huge risks were reckless, and goes on to note that there’s “plenty of blame to go around.”

Let’s hope he eventually goes beyond the real estate and financial industries — probably the biggest wrongdoers where villainy occurred — and looks hard at the role of the press in this debacle.

2 Comments on “Neglecting to Mention That Other Mortgage-Meltdown Villain”

  1. #1 Stephen Downes
    on Aug 24th, 2007 at 8:48 am

    I really hate sloppy language like this – “Everyone who is defaulting on a home mortgage is not necessarily a victim” – especially when I half-suspect the intent is to mislead.

    What Kurtz means, presumably, is that ‘not everyone who defaults on a home mortgage is a victim’. Fair enough. Some people tried to take advantage of the system and got burned.

    But what Kurtz *said* was, ‘everyone who defaults is not a necessarily victim’. This casts aspersions not only on the people who tried to take advantage, but on every single person who defaults.

    If we assume that Kurtz is not simply a sloppy and careless writer, then the explanation must be that he wants to blame the victims for the mortgage industry failure, but to look like he is focusing only on those who are unsavory.

    Sloppy or deceitful. Some choice.

  2. #2 Dan Gillmor
    on Aug 24th, 2007 at 11:16 am

    I vote for sloppy, though in fairness to Kurtz I had absolutely no doubt about what he meant (and he goes on to explain it more fully). I’d cut him slack on this.