Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal News Blogs -> Lawbeat

Legal News

: Lawbeat

Madoff report is just empty hype

By Mark Obbie

The New York Post's business report is on my regular daily rounds -- not for its legal coverage, but for its coverage of the media business. Today provides a fresh reminder of why I should stay focused when I visit the  tabloid's site. The headline on this story by Kaja Whitehouse seems pretty clear:Instead, the brief story only purports to show that Bernard Madoff's investment-scam victims are racing to court ("lawsuits are swirling," the story claims enigmatically), with no mention whatsoever about how many lawyers or which lawyers are getting work as a result of said swirl. It ends on the contradictory note that contingency-fee lawyers may avoid the mess because some sense they'll never get paid. Don't blame the headline writer for empty bluster or for missing the point. Here's where he or she got that idea -- from the lede:Why hype a story with a claim that you don't even bother trying to document? Wouldn't an equally valid hype-worthy angle focus on the messy litigation aftermath of the scandal? I am aware that I shouldn't be trying to puzzle out the logic of what the Post chooses to do. But once in a while it's enlightening to turn our sights away from the best news organizations, where the problems are usually more subtle, to this kind of low-hanging fruit.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on December 28, 2008 (boomark / email).