Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 26 March 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Context Phase
Ms Geraldine Kennedy:
No. I will address the question about the training of journalists first. Some contributor to the committee made the point that they should all be trained in financial journalism. Financial journalism is only one aspect of a newspaper. Therefore, we do not want them all trained in financial journalism. We had economics writers. We had Simon Carswell, who specialised in the banks to such an extent that the committee invited him to appear. I thank the committee for that. We had Frank McDonald, who specialised in planning. Therefore, different journalists at different times specialise, often learning it on the hoof out in the field. I do not think there is anything wrong necessarily with the training of journalists, because if the whole economics profession, with the exception of your David McWilliams and my Morgan Kelly, did not see any sort of crash, then how could I have trained a journalist to see it?
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