SA needs meaningful economic journalism

DELIVERING this year’s Ruth First memorial lecture, National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) general secretary Irvin Jim once again made the case for socialism, inspired by the economic vision of the Freedom Charter.

The idea that a working-class party running on a socialist platform will emerge from Numsa has been with us for a while. As Jim points out, capitalism has a chequered history in SA. It has been experienced by most South Africans as exploitative, racist and exclusionary. But does this mean socialism is the best idea for SA, or for any country in the 21st century?

This is an important debate. However, I am concerned that the public is not served well, in terms of facts and insights, to have this debate. At this crucial juncture, where we might be at the “precipice”, as Jim sees it, the media seem to be missing in action. Alain de Botton, in his critique of modern news, has a hilarious extract of a short report on South Korean M2 money supply to illustrate the seriousness of the problem. In a short article, we are told of the progress of M2 on an annual basis, and also on a seasonally adjusted month-onmonth basis.

It’s not clear how such a bland, decontextualised report of narrow money supply could be of interest to anyone. Those who really need to know how M2 is doing know where to go for the information. For the rest, such a cold serving of the indicator merely serves to turn people off economic and business news. In short, the report might as well not have been written.

This is not merely a question of the economic illiteracy of the masses. Many educated people — teachers, dentists and engineers — are mystified by economic concepts, or imagine that there is consensus in economics and thus lend support to simplistic ideas of how to solve some of our most intractable challenges.

Earlier this year, academic Jane Duncan pointed out the ways in which the mainstream media were missing the rise of socialism in our society, or misrepresenting it due to reporters’ and editors’ prejudices. The FW de Klerk Foundation countered that the public was not well informed about capitalism.

But by the time it gets to be a question of socialism against capitalism, it’s too late to inform the public meaningfully of the economic issues of the day and an empty ideological nondebate ensues.

It’s in the daily reporting of employment figures, the outcomes of public spending or the effects of corporate decisions that real information and insight can be imparted. Economic and business reporting as a whole has been hollowed out into a recitation of indicators and personalities.

Economists have been thoroughly trounced in their inability to predict and, once it happened, to engage meaningfully with the global financial crisis. But the views of those few economists who rang the alarm bell were ignored by the media, which kept to their triumphalist reporting of the financial services sector until it was no longer possible to do so.

Proper investigative work rarely occurs, save for major scandals such as the construction cartel.

Shallow reporting or decontextualised facts are prepared for general audiences; esoterica for specialists; and a frightening gap remains in the middle. Ordinary citizens struggle to make sense of the economic environment in which they operate.

With click-bait on the internet and addictive reality TV, content entrepreneurs in the economic and business sphere are stepchildren. The fiercest battles in broadcasting are over sports rights, blockbuster movies and reality TV.

Across all platforms, the production of quality but accessible economic journalism is struggling to make business sense. When it comes to the mass market, a business model based on peddling stories of tokoloshes is considered more bankable.

It’s one thing to blame the “juniorisation” of the newsroom but investors and philanthropists also need to step up. It would be dangerous to give up on public discourse that illuminates our economic challenges, that parses through entrenched economic power, and that invites reflection and deliberation.

Makhaya is an economist.