NYT Columnist Answers to Bankers First

Posted on Oct 5, 2011

Flickr / david_shankbone (CC-BY)

A New York Times financial columnist who specializes in covering Wall Street went to the Occupy Wall Street protest for the first time Saturday only after he said he received a call from “the chief executive of a major bank” who wanted to know whether the protests were “a big deal” or a potential “personal safety problem.”

Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer and columnist for Salon, criticized Andrew Ross Sorkin on Tuesday first because it took him more than three weeks to make it to the place that also happens to be his beat, and secondly because when he finally did go, it wasn’t because he thought the protests were worth covering, but because the CEO “of a major bank” had raised questions about the demonstrations. —BF

Glenn Greenwald on Salon:

How interesting that when a CEO “of a major bank” wants to know how threatening these protests are, he doesn’t seek out corporate advisers or dispatch the bank’s investigators, but instead gets the NYT‘s notoriously banker-friendly Wall Street reporter on the phone and assigns him to report back.  How equally interesting that if this NYT financial columnist can’t address the concerns and questions of a CEO “of a major bank,” he hops to it to find out what was demanded of him.  Sorkin did what he was told, cautiously concluding:

As I wandered around the park, it was clear to me that most bankers probably don’t have to worry about being in imminent personal danger. This didn’t seem like a brutal group — at least not yet.

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