ECONOMIC PAPERS, VOL. 30, NO. 4, DECEMBER, 2011, 441–442
Economic Journalism: An International Perspective It is a pleasure and an honour to share a panel at this economics conference with such distinguished academics and journalists. I am not quite sure what I am doing here. As a think tanker I am not a real academic and as a columnist I am not a real journalist, either. In fact, you may not even think that I am real economist since I did my PhD at a law faculty. At least it was a thesis in law and economics. But be all that as it may, after three years in the country I may still pass as a real international observer of Australian affairs and so I was asked to add an international perspective to the discussion of economic journalism in Australia. I like comparative studies because they can reveal national peculiarities that might otherwise go unnoticed. There is a wonderful anecdote about the late Lord Alexander of Weedon who, as chairman of the British bank NatWest, visited the German Bundesbank. Lord Alexander was carrying a copy of an English newspaper that displayed a headline to the effect: ‘‘Good news – another rise in house prices,’’ on which the legendary Bundesbank president Karl-Otto Po¨hl commented: ‘‘Over here, that would be bad news.’’ It is quite a telling anecdote because different countries have different economic narratives. Not only that in Germany rising house prices would be bad news. In fact, house prices in Germany are not really a news story at all. Maybe that is because they never change. In contrast, in the English speaking world few other things are followed with as much passion as the ups and downs of the property market. It is other things that really excite the Germans, for example, inflation. Not that inflation in post-War Germany has ever really been a big problem. Compared to other industrialised nations, inflation has always been low in Germany. But distant memories of hyperinflation and two monetary reforms are still very much alive. And so whether the German CPI is up 1.2 or 1.5 per cent, it is always enormously important, front page stuff. So countries are very different when it comes to reporting economic developments. I have certainly noticed it in the three countries in which I have lived – Germany, Britain and Australia. Each nation has its own economic obsessions, its own fears and its own quirks. If you accept them without demur, you will usually get by. But try telling the British that they are not living on an overcrowded island, or dare explain to the Germans that being the world’s greatest exporter is not necessarily all positive, or mention to the Australians that local government can be a force for good, and you get into trouble. So every nation has its stories that it likes to hear over and over again. And sometimes reading the Australian, British and German press, as I do most mornings, it can all get a bit tiring. In a way, it often seems as if you have heard it all before. There are very few economic commentators that still manage to say something new every now and then – present company excepted, of course. In a way, Australian newspapers are thus not that different from newspapers in other countries. There are some predominant ideas and motifs that are taken as a given, like the house price issue. I am still waiting for the day on which I read in an Australian newspaper that rising house prices are just another kind of inflation. Instead, Australian newspapers have invented a very elegant phraseology to gloss over this very elementary economic discovery. So rising house prices mean that ‘‘the market is doing well,’’ ‘‘the market displays confidence’’ or ‘‘the market is gaining momentum.’’ Such expressions sound so much nicer than ‘‘fewer and fewer Australians can afford their homes.’’
441 Ó 2011 The Economic Society of Australia doi: 10.1111/j.1759-3441.2011.00149.x