The Big Bailout: David Cay Johnston pleads with journalists

Back at the dawn of time when the Internet was barely a glimmer in anyone's eye, I worked for the Detroit Free Press under Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston. He not only taught me how to write, but also which questions to ask. I have never seen a reporter who worked harder than Johnston.

Today, a letter from Johnston has been posted at Romenesko, an insiders blog for journalists. In it, Johnston pleads with his fellow reporters to do much, much more than they are now in reporting the proposed bailout.

The Administration has scared the markets and some key legislative leaders, but it has not laid out a coherent, specific and compelling need for this enormous proposal, which is the equivalent of a one-time 55 percent income tax surcharge. (Instead the money will be borrowed, so ask from whom and how this much can be raised so quickly if the credit markets are nearly seized up with fear.)...

As of now we are, as a group, behaving just as we did the last two times the administration sought to rush through a hastily thought out, ill-conceived plan. Why in the world are we being so gullible and naive? whatever happened to the core value of journalism -- check it out?

We may need this bailout, and we may need it soon. But if we don't understand exactly the why, how, who and what, then the United States may be in very deep trouble.