Peston points the figure

Last night's journalism leaders forum at Uclan never really got started until the question and answer session at the end.

The star of the show,the BBC's Robert Peston, appeared via webcam.

Ahead of his appearance this morning in front of the commons select committee looking at the media and the financial crisis,he recognised that the media would have to look closely at itself in how it reported the crisis.

However his anger was directed at the people he termed those on he termed the people on high salaries who are paid to monitor and regulate.

Kevin Anderson,head of Guardian blogs, made the point that he felt the media had failed to do their job."a failure of journalism is when someone asks why should something that happens in China makes me lose my job" he said.and added that another of the failures arose due to the global nature of the crisis

"Journalists didn't act globally together to pull together the global elements of financial complexity."

There was also a consensus feeling that PR and the advertising model had a role to play.Journalists were perhaps a little too eager to take for granted what they were being told.

Head of journalism at the college Mike Ward questioned the panel as to whether people would lose interest in economics once the green shoots of recovery start to appear.

As a conclusion,the panel agreed that there was a shortage of financial journalists.Perhaps,they felt, journalists need the essential skills of understanding business to report on that same business