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David McElroy

An Alien Sent to Observe the Human Race

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Ignorant economic reporting doesn’t help an equally ignorant public

By David McElroy · August 4, 2011

A helicopter pilot was flying outside of Seattle on a very foggy day and got confused about where he was. As he approached an office building, the co-pilot held up a sign for the people in the office building to see, which read, “Where are we?”

The people in the office building grabbed a piece of paper and wrote, “In a helicopter.” When the pilot saw the note, he immediately navigated over to a landing pad nearby. The co-pilot asked, “How did you know where you were based on their response?”

The pilot said, “When I saw that the message was accurate but useless, I knew we were at Microsoft.”

It’s an old joke, but it reminds me of modern reporting about economics. I’ve always known that economics was too complex to get right on television, but there was a day when print reporters could be expected to get the basics right. (The example in the graphic above makes it clear that it hasn’t always been the case, though.) It’s gotten to the point that the things I read in most stories dealing with economic issues are accurate in the technical sense, but provide so little context that they’re useless.

This is true about stories about the overall economy, but it’s also true about stories concerning mundane economic news that shouldn’t be hard to explain. I want to share one example that I ran across this week in my local newspaper. I’d like you to read this and attempt to figure out what the company quoted in the story is seeking. (It’s no fair if you bring in other knowledge about the case or already know too much about tariffs in general.)

The headline on this story was, “Alabama plant says trade law needs changes”:

By the Associated Press

HALEYVILLE, Ala. — The chief operating officer of Exxel Outdoors says the Haleyville company has run into difficulty because of a change in trade laws.

The TimesDaily reports that Harry Kazazian says the Generalized System of Preferences trade laws no longer designates sleeping bags as a textile product. Exxel, which has a plant in Haleyville, is the largest sleeping bag manufacturer in the U.S.

The Haleyville plant employs about 90 factory workers, 25 corporate positions and supports hundreds of supply chains.

Officials say companies in Bangladesh have an advantage because U.S. companies must pay duties on imports to manufacture sleeping bags.

The GSP trade laws expired Jan. 1. Kazazian and members of the Alabama congressional delegation have urged Congress to make sleeping bags a textile product again when the GSP is renewed.

I think it’s realistic to assume that the company is really asking for the government to protect it from competition that produces a less expensive product, but it never actually says that. It numbs the mind with facts that are accurate (presumably) but completely useless.

So what do you suppose the story specifically means, based on what’s here, not conjecture? I’ve had several really bright people read it and not a one could come up with a definitive answer without making assumptions that aren’t in the article.

And now here’s the more interesting question. Do you suppose the reporter understood what he was writing about? I don’t think he did. Since I was once a reporter and then an editor, I’ve gotten stories very much like this one from young and inexperienced reporters who didn’t understand what they had heard or what they were writing about. The difference was that I forced the reporter to go back and get information — to figure out what it really meant, enough to explain it in written words.

So think about this. The reporter obviously didn’t understand. The editor who looked at the story at the initial newspaper didn’t understand it enough to point out that it made no sense. Then it went to the Associated Press, which put it onto the wire in this form — with nobody from the AP questioning why it was without context or meaning, as written. Finally, it was used in my local newspaper, The Birmingham News, without anyone apparently ever noticing that it was meaningless as written. (Coincidentally, The Birmingham News announced on Wednesday that it’s offering early retirement and forcing a mandatory unpaid week of “furlough” for all full-time employees.)

Even if every word in that story is accurate, it’s bad journalism. It would be more useful to cover the economy with cartoon images than what’s being done. At least with a cartoon, you know you’re looking at something simple and fun. A pile of gray words gives you the impression you’re learning something significant.

And why are reporters economically ignorant? For one thing, they take very little economics in college. For another thing, most reporters understand words more than numbers — and there’s nobody along the way who’s forcing them to understand that just stringing words together halfway decently isn’t enough to provide understanding.

We live in a world where people are increasingly ignorant of economic matters. The economy is in the toilet and people need to understand why. Newspapers aren’t doing their jobs properly if this is the best they’re going to do in helping people to understand, because “accurate but useless” doesn’t do anybody any good.

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I got a note today from a woman who lives on the other side of the country and has a young son: “[Young son] says that we should meet you sometime. He just said of your profile picture that he likes your face. I have shared photos and videos of Lucy and the cats since he was really little.” This made me profoundly happy. I trust the intuitive judgment of children about people. Little ones tend to read character very well. Adults are easy to fool, but it’s much harder to fool children about who you really are. I hope I do get to meet this young man and his mom one day.

I’m in the McDonald’s near my house, sitting near the play area. There’s one little girl — maybe 5 years old — who’s here with her father. He’s about my age, so he’s older than the typical father of a 5-year-old. Even though she’s the only kid here, the girl is giggling and having fun by herself. She periodically cries out, “Daddy, look!” And then she shows off something she thinks is impressive. Then, just a moment ago, she called out very sweetly, “Daddy?” He patiently said, “Yes, sweetheart.” And then she said, “Daddy, I love you so much!” And then she went back to playing as her father looked on with happiness and love.

When I first discovered the idea of unschooling, it was so radical that I had trouble finding people who even knew what it was. Today, the idea is mainstream enough that major media outlets sometimes cover the topic in a favorable way. The Sunday newspaper supplement called Parade had a strongly favorable article about unschooling a couple of weeks ago which explained what it is and how it’s different from homeschooling. It’s less structured. There’s no curriculum. There’s plenty of flexibility. And there are no tests and grades. (Most people today are shocked to learn that testing and grading didn’t exist in schools through history until the last couple hundred years.) If you want your children to think for themselves instead of following the herd mentality that pervades every school I’ve been part of, you owe it to yourself — and to your kids — to consider taking control of your children’s development back from governments. Just because you and I survived institutional schools doesn’t mean it’s the wisest choice. Start by reading the Parade article. It might open your eyes.

In the Birmingham suburb of Hueytown, the Golden Gophers of Hueytown High School had just defeated the Eufala Tigers in the second round of the state playoffs Friday night. It’s not a game that will mean a lot to anybody outside those two communities, but it meant everything to the players and coaches involved. After the game, Hueytown defensive coordinator Trent Campbell was celebrating with his victorious players when he noticed Eufala offensive lineman Dallas Ingram distraught and alone. Campbell left his players to console the distraught Ingram and photographer Dennis Victory caught photos of the pair together. “My reaction was to go see about him, because I’ll see my guys on Sunday and next week and the rest of their high school careers, but that’s a young man we watched on film for a week and studied and he’s a fantastic player,” Campbell said later. “And it wasn’t too long ago when I played my last high school football game and I know what that feeling is and you sort of never forget that. I went to tell him what a great player I thought he was and what a great game I thought they played and I wish nobody had to lose that night because it was an incredible game.” This is what sports at the high school level should be about. Winning is great and winning is fun. But humanity and decency last longer.

I have changed radically about some things over the years, but probably none of those changes have been as great as the ways that I feel about people who are viewed as evil or criminal. When I was young, I was eager to see criminals or foreign political enemies killed. Today, I don’t view such people though rose-colored glasses and I don’t view them as blameless folks who are going to turn their lives around if we just think happy thoughts. But I can’t celebrate the death of anybody, even if he might deserve it in some ways of thinking about it. Even if it’s sometimes necessary to kill someone — and those cases are often debatable — I regret the death of someone who will now never have a chance to discover love and change his life. There are some evil people in this world, but I can’t celebrate their deaths.

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