blogBernie Madoff’s bizarre media invisibility
How extremely curious it is that Bernard Madoff — uncannily successful investor and manager of billions for the rich and famous, Wall Street bigwig, generous philanthropist, important civic personage, New Yorker of consequence and stature for decades — was a virtual nobody until the second Thursday of December, according to the paper of record. Before he announced his crookedness, Madoff’s name seems to have been mentioned in The New York Times all of six times, and in each of those instances only very passingly: as a best man at a wedding in 1960, and then in five brief news articles about technical stock-trading issues between 1992 and 2000.
Which tells us something about his shrewdness, I suppose — if you’re engaged in a massive criminal enterprise, it makes sense to stay out of the spotlight. But just how and why on earth did the Times‘ business staff, for all those decades, neglect to run a longer piece about him and his remarkable firm and his enormous reputation?
He’s mentioned in one of the articles in Michael Lewis’ book “Panic”, talking about stockbroking excesses during the tech bubble. I snarkily noted on my blog that he was so upset by the ups and downs of real stocks, he decided that making up his own returns was much easier.
Comment by Michael — April 5, 2009 @ 4:37 pm
The New York Times is the biggest joke as a newspaper and i’m a liberal , not a conservative writing this .
Comment by jonny quest — July 28, 2009 @ 10:15 pm