Sunday 8 November
| 20:00 | – 22:00: Welcome Reception at the Sofitel Brussels Europe Hotel |
Monday 9 November
| 09:00 | Registration |
| 09:30 | Welcome by Raymond Frenken & brief opening remarks by Willy Ruetten, EJC Director |
| 09:35 | Keynote speech: "Did the media and the markets let down Iceland?" , by Asgeir Jonsson, chief economist at Kaupthing Bank, Iceland, and author of "Why Iceland?" |
| 10:00 | Keynote speech: "Financial regulation in the wake of the 2008 credit crisis", by Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, President of the Party of European Socialists, former Prime Minister of Denmark |
| 10:30 | Q&A |
| 10:45 | Coffee break |
| 11:00 | First plenary: Why did the coal mine ignore the dead canary? Moderator: Eithne Treanor This interactive session reflects on the media's role in the crisis by using questions like: Did the media see the crisis coming? If they warned viewers and readers, then how come no one acted before it was too late? Or did we all just read the wrong papers and watch the wrong channels? Are generalist-journalists capable of covering the full financial story? Should financial journalism share the blame? Why did mass media failed to pick up on the Wall Street shenanigans that caused the crisis? How come the few specialist reporters who saw it coming failed to get their stories into the 'echo chamber'? Participants:
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| 12:00 | Presentation: "Financial Crisis and Story Telling by Distributive Coalition", by Prof Karel Williams, Manchester University & Prof Ewald Engelen, University of Amsterdam |
| 12:20 | Further discussion among first plenary speakers |
| 12:45 | Buffet lunch |
| 13:45 | 'House of Commons' debate: Who is in charge of the pink pages? Reporters, editors and academics engage in a direct debate with bankers and financial PR specialists to examine the role of financial journalists in a financial world where information and opinions have become decisive commodities. This 'House of Commons' Debate is a highly interactive, rapid-fire session based on crucial observations on the role of the media in the financial meltdown. Are journalists mere 'partners' in the financial ecosystem, where their main objective is to properly inform investors? Or should they have been more distanced from their topic? Should financial journalists serve the interests of shareholders? Or act as financial watchdogs? P'Speaker of the House': Eithne Treanor Front-benchers to present observations from the media side:
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| 15:15 | Coffee Break |
| 15:30 | Second plenary: The New Paradigm of Money This session actively looks for bold ideas that question the economic premises that caused the financial meltdown. Background: In the old days, "money" was seen as an intelligent, fast and efficient way of matching supply and demand. That no longer appears to be the case. Has money become a business all on its own? Is it too virtual to understand and regulate? Has "money" become a business that feeds on itself? Is it just creating (self-referential) financial products that no longer cater to traditional production industries, leaving manufacturing businesses starved for cash. In parallel, we have seen the rise of social networks that are no longer "money based", that depend on network effects and on sharing knowledge, rather than on owning and appropriating physical objects. Has the age of scarcity, where money was used to allocate resources, morphed into an age of abundance where people share what they have? In a world where "quarterly growth" in dollars and euros remains the basis for valuating stock markets and assessing the economy, can money still be relied on as a performance indicator? Will this crisis signal the end of the Anglo-Saxon model of money and markets? Are we in for a paradigm change, in which "quarterly growth" at any price is no longer a viable model? Presentations:
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| 16.45 | Special guest appearance; Kevin 'Kal' Kallaugher, award-winning cartoonist for the Economist. (A selection of Kal's cartoons on the financial crisis will be exhibited during the conference.) |
| 17:00 | End of session |
Social event
| 18:45 | Departure from Sofitel Brussels Europe with bus service (optional) |
| 19:00 | 22:00 - Get Together Party at The Claridge multimedia club in Brussels. (The Claridge, Leuvensesteenweg 24, 1210 Brussels, Tel. +32(0)2 227 39 42)
At the party there will be a presentation of "The Crime of Our Time", a new film and book by news dissector Danny Schechter, exposing the financial crisis as a crime story. |
| 22:10 | Bus service back to Sofitel Brussels Europe (optional) |
Tuesday 10 November
| 09:00 | Registration |
| 09:30 | Opening remarks by Eithne Treanor and short video review of day one. |
| 09:45 | Presentation: "The Story Not Reported", by Jason Schenker, President of Prestige Economics LLC, Austin, Texas, advisor to the risk management committee of Wachovia bank in the US, and former McKinsey consultant. |
| 10:15 | Presentation: "Aftershock: How the BBC called the crisis", by Professor Steve Schifferes, Marjorie Deane Professor of Financial Journalism Graduate School of Journalism, City University London, and former BBC News Online Business Editor |
| 10:45 | Presentation: "Media and the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy", by Melisande Middleton, Director, Center for International Media Ethics |
| 11:15 | Coffee break |
| 11:30 | Presentation: "The new regulatory landscape in the EU", by Karel Lannoo, Director of Center for European Policy Studies, Brussels |
| 12:15 | Lunch break |
| 13:45 | Closing plenary: Financial Journalism 2.0? Can it Exist?
In this final session, we try to hammer down the five main things that need to happen in financial journalism. Both participants and speakers discuss the future of financial journalism and journalism in general, drawing on aspects raised at the conference. Can the news process be altered? Is there still a proper watchdog role for journalists in a world of 'free' media? Is there a future at all for "news", "media" and "journalism"? Historically, financial journalism has been at the fundamental core of creating news media, so where is the silver lining in the latest crisis. Newspapers were first published in the 17th century because stock markets needed information. Newswires like Reuters owe their existence to pigeons that began flying share prices from Brussels to Aachen early in the 19th century. The depression in the 1920s spawned a series of new creative products during the decade that followed. Photography and art flourished; magazines such as Fortune, Newsweek, Life and Esquire were all started after the collapse of Wall Street. “The culture stopped being all about money,” Vanity Fair observed. “After the wreckage... it might even be a better place to live and dream.” Moderator: Eithne Treanor Panelists:
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| 15:30 | Refreshments |
| End of Programme | |
