“All week long, the images screamed financial panic,” wrote Philip Kennicott in one of his trademark thumb-suckers for the Washington Post Style section. “And if it seemed the same ones were appearing over and over again, it’s in part because the media don’t exactly know what they’re looking at yet.” Well, he’s got that right, anyway. From the media’s point of view, at least in the first instance, the worst thing about the financial panic or “meltdown”—a favorite “crisis” word since the 1970s—was that no one knew what the story was. Bad things were happening, but it wasn’t quite clear why they were happening or who could be blamed for them. Who were the good guys and who were the bad? One obvious way to tell the story was in terms of a grimly satisfying comeuppance for the greedy capitalists on Wall Street, and this version got something of a workout. But you could tell that the media’s hearts weren’t really in it—perhaps because the would-be villains were also the most visible of the victims. As Mr. Kennicott acknowledged, the anguished broker clutching his brow was the symbol—or, as he portentously (and pretentiously) put it, the “synecdoche”—of the crisis to the media. This is partly, he adds, because so many ordinary people whose retirement accounts are invested in mutual funds are similarly clutching their brows. Everybody with a 401(k) would now have to be numbered among the greedy capitalists.

At the same time, Mr. Kennicott wonders if the