Too much economy

Macfarlane presented facts based on some analysis done by his organisation. This research revealed to him at least two things. First, the amount of media coverage Australians get on economic matters exceeds that on offer in the United States and the United Kingdom by a very large margin, an exponentially large margin in fact. And second, the detail of some of the reportage does little to inform the reader over and above that offered by more traditional longitudinal analysis.

Macfarlane concluded that, in his opinion, we do get too much economic news but even he was unable to explain why. He did not categorically state that the level of reporting in Australia was a particularly good or bad thing; he was fairly even handed.

He felt the level of Australian economic literacy developed in part by large scale and frequent reporting on the economy had helped to facilitate economic reform. On the down side he felt it contributed to people being a bit gloomy - I would add that it has also bored some people to death.

But I would have thought that this mystery posed by the governor of the RBA would have sent reporters scurrying all over the place to find an explanation that the good governor could not. But no. Macfarlane’s comments sank like a stone in the lake of media disinterest.

So I searched the Fairfax site for some comments on Macfarlane’s speech. There were none. For about $3 a pop I could have purchased any number of stories relating to other things Macfarlane had said in April but nothing about the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia saying he felt that there was too much economic reporting going on in Australia. I found nothing in the Murdoch publications either.

The message here is clear: the media, and I suspect politicians, firmly believe we need to know this stuff. Although I will be interested to see if the frequency of reporting is quite so intense when things start to go pear-shaped.

But let’s face it, most of what purports to be economic news is not news; it is steady state commentary. A live call of an around-the-world yacht race would be just as engaging.

Economic reporting is a bit like weather reports, but less useful. Oil prices have captured the imagination of economic journalists of late and a fair share of our disposable income. But do we really need to know on what price a barrel of oil might bring on any given day. I sincerely doubt any business whose largest expense is fuel, like the airline industry for example, relies on radio reports or newspaper updates to determine their next strategic move in response to fluctuating prices. Anyone who puts petrol in their car knows what the oil price is doing. Knowing the price of a barrel of oil is about as useful to most people as knowing the going price for ambergris.

Bill Clinton’s political advisor, James Carville, gave us the phrase that gave us the bumper sticker, the T-shirt and embossed coffee mug that declares, “It’s the economy, Stupid!” Even though Carville’s pointed message was only designed to keep Clintons campaign workers on message, no one has embraced it so passionately as Australian politicians and journalists. Little wonder Macfarlane’s suggestion that economics is over-reported in this country disappeared into some kind of journalistic Bermuda Triangle. It was tantamount to heresy.