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Here is a little bit more about our panellists:

ELENA CHERNEY is editor of The Globe and Mail's Report on Business. Cherney started at the Globe in 2007 as an editor in the Life section. Before joining the Globe, Cherney spent seven years covering Canadian business news as a Toronto-based correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. She has also worked as a reporter for the Montreal Gazette and the National Post. She is a two-time winner of the Edward Goff Penny prize for young journalists. Born in Victoria, B.C., Cherney grew up in Montreal and was educated at Yale University, where she studied English and history.

DAVID MOORCROFT is an award-winning communicator who has worked in the fields of public relations and journalism for 35 years. In 1979, he joined the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) where he eventually became Senior Vice-President of Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. He served as the firm’s chief spokesperson, and directed the public affairs strategy for three consecutive CEOs. After retiring from RBC in 2008, David started a consulting firm called Strategy2Communications, which helps companies create and translate organizational strategy to their various stakeholders.

And moderator:

AMANDA LANG is the senior business reporter for CBC News and co-host of CBC's business show The Lang And O'Leary Exchange. Previously, she was co-anchor of SqueezePlay, the Business News Network (BNN)'s nightly national talk show. Before returning to Canada and to BNN in 2002, Lang was an anchor and correspondent at CNN and its business network CNNfn in New York, where she reported from the New York Stock Exchange. She was the New York correspondent for the Financial Post in 1998 and 1999. During her years as a business reporter she has covered stock markets, the economy, financial instruments, the technology beat, Wall Street, Canadian and U.S. politics, and more.

CJF chair Bob Lewis: Among the subject's covered tonight -- whether financial journalists are held captive of the organizations they're reporting on

Lang: journalism is to me, about being on the sidelines, it's about not being involved ... that's what journalists do: we just watch it, or we should or we're doing something wrong. Lang starts by asking Moorcroft: How do you think we're doing?

Today is the anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers

Lang: The 24/7 news model, and specifically the need to fill a news hole that is entirely about business. Does that cause problems? Now we've got to tackle business all day long; does it lower the standards?

Cherney says it helps perpetuate the sports journalism side of financial journalism: are the markets up, are they down? She adds: that may not be the thing financial journalists are best at

Moorcroft: can't just blame one particular group - investors, journalists - no one saw it coming

Moorcroft: Yes, I would agree it's there. He adds that he can sense hostility from some journalists when he was in PR during the 80s and 90s -- a sense that business is out to screw somebody

Lang: Some of this nation's best business commentators didn't go to school to become business journalists? Is that a good thing? What's the right approach?

M: Jschools are failing students. Business and math not a part of curriculum

Cherney: hiring non-journalists with biz background also important. Curiosity is important

Cherney: There are so many linkages in corporate Canada, that in itself becomes even more challenging. I think in the case of reporters, it's a very fine line. People have to make their own judgment, she adds, and establish their own comfort zones. Sometimes you have to push back.

Moorcroft: fine line between having access to someone, and falling in love with them. Big CEOs have personalities.

Cherney: Canada's biz leaders are reluctant to speak on the record

Moorcroft says that executives tell him all the time that they don't want to talk to journalists
because executives are afraid of being taken out of context.

Cherney: We should be held to a standard of accuracy and fairness, but to not provide interpretation, I think, would be to fail

Cherney says she's always liked that with business journalism facts and numbers are always there -- and you can't get too far away from them. It then becomes how intelligent you are with your analysis.

Cherney: journalists are not the only ones though. There's an entire industry ... that cause greater mistakes that cause investors to lose much more money. Reporters are not the only ones who are failing to see the issues.

Cherney: Journalists are distilling all this information out there -- and yeah, they're going to miss things -- but at least you can know what you're reading is not compromised