Moneybox

Businessweek Warns That Minorities May Be Buying Houses Again

Bloomberg Businessweek is a genuinely great magazine that does an amazing job of making business and economics news accessible and interesting, but this way of illustrating a cover story about the return of aggressive mortgage lending products is really something else.

The idea is that we can know things are really getting out of hand since even nonwhite people can get loans these days! They ought to be ashamed.

Update, 1:48 p.m.: Bloomberg Businessweek “apologizes” with a pretty categorical non-apology:

“Our cover illustration last week got strong reactions, which we regret,” Josh Tyrangiel, the magazine’s editor, wrote in a statement sent to POLITICO. “Our intention was not to incite or offend. If we had to do it over again we’d do it differently.”

Note that Tyrangiel doesn’t say they regret publishing the actual content of the cover, but the “strong reactions” that it incited. How hard is it to take responsibility for the cover, say sorry, and leave it at that?

Read more context on the controversy here.