He compared the efforts of financial journalists with the way crime reporters or
foreign correspondents worked. He painted a picture of the outcry that would
result if a legal correspondent began uncritically reproducing the prosecutor’s case
as gospel in a murder trial, without consulting the defence arguments or
interviewing the victim’s family before forming an opinion of what was likely or
unlikely. According to Blomkvist the same rules had to apply to financial journalists.
The rest of the book consisted of a chain of evidence to support his case. One long
chapter examined the reporting of a famous dot-com in six daily papers, as well as
in the Financial Journal, Dagens Industri, and “A-ekonomi,” the business report on
Swedish TV. He first quoted and summarised what the reporters had said and
written. Then he made a comparison with the actual situation. In describing the
development of the company he listed time after time the simple questions that a
serious reporter would have asked but which the whole corps of financial reporters
had neglected to ask. It was a neat move.
Another chapter dealt with the IPO of Telia stock—it was the book’s most jocular
and ironic section, in which some financial writers were castigated by name,
including one William Borg, to whom Blomkvist seemed to be particularly hostile. A
chapter near the end of the book compared the level of competence of Swedish
and foreign financial reporters. He described how serious reporters at
London’s Financial Times, the Economist, and some German financial newspapers
had reported similar subjects in their own countries. The comparison was not
favourable to the Swedish journalists. The final chapter contained a sketch with
suggestions as to how this deplorable situation could be remedied. The conclusion
of the book echoed the introduction:
If a parliamentary reporter handled his assignment by uncritically taking up a lance
in support of every decision that was pushed through, no matter how
preposterous, or if a political reporter were to show a similar lack of judgement—
that reporter would be fired or at the least reassigned to a department where he or
she could not do so much damage. In the world of financial reporting, however, the
normal journalistic mandate to undertake critical investigations and objectively
report findings to the readers appears not to apply. Instead the most successful
rogue is applauded. In this way the future of Sweden is also being created, and all
remaining trust in journalists as a corps of professionals is being compromised.