Running economics down: fact and fantasy in the presentation of economists in the media

Economic Papers (Economic Society of Australia), March, 2004 by William Coleman

This paper surveys the denigration of economics and economists in the media and evaluates the truthfulness of the media's principal assertions. It seeks to answer the following questions: (a) why is economics denigrated in the media ? (b) why are economists silent in the face of such denigration? and (c) what might be done?

Keywords: Anti-economics, Economists, Media.

JEL Codes: A1, Z0

   Australians have always disliked scientific economics and (still
   more) scientific economists.
   William Keith Hancock, (1931)

1 Introduction

Media denigration of economics in Australia is no great novelty.

   Our present experts in the dismal science have fallen into disrepute
   with their fellow countrymen. It is said on the one hand that they
   have helped us get into our present fix and, on the other, that
   their advice to get us out of it is bad.

Thus spoke an editorial of the Australian Financial Review, August 23 1951.

But it is only since about 1990 that the Australian media has turned from occasional disparagement towards something that begins to resemble a campaign.

   People have to be blind or totally isolated from society if they
   fail to realize that from the late 1980s especially, economists have
   hardly been the flavour of the month in the Australian media and
   have been condemned as either the bearers of bad tidings, or as
   midwives through wrong policy advice in inducing ... hardships ...
   Groenewegen (1994, p. 155)

One may add to this quote that the campaign condemns economics, not only as "midwives of hardship", but also on account of its supposed insinuation of selfishness, its supposed apologies for the demands of the wealthy, its supposed ideological character, and its supposed "right wing" bias.

This stream of derision has flowed copiously from the pre eminent organs of the media, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review, the Australian's "Higher Education Supplement", and the Age.

This derision cannot be discounted (and disregarded) as simply the articulation of one point of view in a "debate" over economics. There is no debate. A debate requires two contrary voices. And what has been observed in the Australian media is a chorus on one side, and virtual silence from the other. For the presence of, say, Alan Wood, or Paddy McGuinness (or syndicated items from the Economist) does not make for some "other side" in a hypothetical debate, as these writers have only incidentally defended economists against the many attacks upon them, (and have tended towards negative judgements themselves of academic economists). We are aware of just one explicit defence of economics in the entire media since the late 1980s, which was a column by Frank Devine in 1997 (see Devine 1997).

Neither should this derision be misrepresented (and exonerated) as simply criticism of economics. We all criticise economics, and should do so. Economics finds the world surprising, and will only grow because of criticism- good criticism. But media "antieconomics" is not concerned to "grow" economics; it wants to damage it. It wants to drastically reduce the notice afforded economics, to degrade its honours, efface its institutional identity, mute its voice in public policy formation, and reduce it to the meek accomplice of political currents. To the mind of media "anti-economists" economics is a bane, and they seek to make the word a better place by getting rid of it. This posture is the defining feature of the "anti-economist". (1)

The objective of this paper is to survey the media anti-economics and to evaluate the truthfulness of its principal assertions.

We begin by distinguishing the methods of the campaign.

2 The Media as Accessory

The principal means by which the media campaign operates are twofold. They may be called, "the media as accessory" and "media as accuser".

In "the media as accessory", the media facilitates a campaign against economics by elements in the broader public culture by disseminating, circulating and accommodating the anti-economics of non-media authors, typically academics. (2) A good illustration of this facilitation occurred in 1991 in the media's reception of Economic Rationalism in Canberra by the sociologist and anti-economist Michael Pusey. (3) This book's principal contention was that practitioners of the "false science" of economics had occupied the senior grades of the Australian Public Service, and there had effected considerable "mischief". Pusey later gratefully recorded how the media propelled the book into public consciousness:

   When the book was finally launched on 7 September 1991, all the
   springs were coiled. Kirsten Garett's superb ABC 'Background
   Briefing' Program (25 August 1991) coincided with the launch ...
   Then Hugh Stretton's marvellous, full-page review article in the
   Australian on 11 September 199l really got it going in an ideally
   favourable way. [With] about 50 radio interviews ... about 23
   'dedicated' articles in the metropolitan press; five parliamentary
   hearings; and wide magazine and journal coverage ... Clearly the
   media attention was quite decisive in every stage. Pusey (1993,
   p. 384)