’60 Minutes’ wins Polk Award for questioning speculation in oil prices
CBS’ “60 Minutes” recently won the George Polk Award for National Television Reporting for its January 2009 segment that found Wall Street speculation – rather than supply or demand — was pushing up the price of oil in 2008. Correspondent Steve Kroft reports that “the U.S. Department of Energy’s own statistics show that if the markets had been working properly, the price of oil should have been going down, not up.”
Today’s Tip: Dust off your economics textbook.
When situations don’t mesh with basic economic principles, start asking why. Revisiting the textbook will give you a foundation to start questioning economists and other experts. One such book is ”Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics” by Henry Hazlitt. Or try ”Basic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy” by Thomas Sowell. There’s also a book in the Dummies series on economics.
For more training, check out BusinessJournalism.org, or apply for the Wharton Seminars for Business Journalists, which will be held this year Oct. 10-13 in Philadelphia. I completed the Wharton program with economist Jeremy Siegel in 1996. Even though I minored in economics, the seminar was invaluable. The Wharton seminar is pricey, but several organizations offer scholarships.
