Media myths

At first sight the research reported here is something that only political science researchers should worry about. In trying to explain election results, it is better to use ‘real time’ data rather than ‘revised, final or vintage’ data. But as the authors point out, it has wider implications. Voters do not seem to respond to how the economy actually is (which is best measured by the final revised data), but how it is reported to be. (This does not just matter for elections: here is a discussion of some other research which suggests how the way recessions are reported can influence economic decisions.)

Just one more indication that the media really matters. I would not bother to report such things, if this point was generally accepted as an obvious truth. That it is not, in the UK at least, reflects various different tendencies. Those on the right know that the print media is heavily biased their way, and that this has a big impact on television, so they have an interest in denying that this matters (while funding think tanks whose job is in part to harass the BBC about its alleged left wing bias). Those on the centre left often react negatively to a few of those further left who discount all awkward facts by blaming the media. And the media itself is very reluctant to concede its own power.

As an example, here is Rafael Behr in the Guardian talking disapprovingly about Labour supporters:

“I heard constant complaints about failure to “challenge myths” about the economy, benefits, immigration and other areas where Labour is deemed unfit to govern by the people who choose governments. The voters are wrong, and what is required is a louder exposition of their wrongness.”

What is really revealing about this paragraph is what is not there. We go straight from myths to voters, as if no one else is involved. I doubt very much that many who voice the ‘constant complaints’ Behr is talking about think that voters created and sustained these myths all by themselves.

The discussion of issues involving the economy, the welfare system and immigration among most of the ‘political class’ is often so removed from reality that it deserves the label myth. In the case of the economy, I provided chapter and verse in my ‘mediamacro myth’ series before the election. It was not just the myth that Labour profligacy was responsible for austerity, but also the myth about the ‘strong recovery’ when the recovery was the weakest for at least a century, and that this recovery had 'vindicated' austerity. Given the importance that voters attach to economic credibility, I do not believe I was exaggerating in suggesting that the mediamacro myth was in good part responsible for the Conservatives winning the election.

The media is vital in allowing myths to be sustained or dispelled. That does not mean that the media itself creates myths out of thin air. These myths on the economy were created by the Conservative party and their supporters, and sustained by the media’s reliance on City economists. They get support from half truths: pre-crisis deficits were a little too large, GDP growth rates for the UK did sometimes exceed all other major economies.

Myths on welfare do come from real concerns: there is benefit fraud, and it is deeply resented by most voters. But who can deny that much of the media (including the makers of certain television programmes) have stoked that resentment? When the public think that £24 out of every £100 spent on benefits is claimed fraudulently, compared with official estimates of £0.70 per £100, that means that the public is wrong, and we have a myth. (An excellent source for an objective view of the UK’s welfare system is John Hills’ book, which has myth in its subtitle) As I noted in that post, when people are asked questions where they have much more direct experience, they tend to give (on average of course) much more accurate answers. Its when they source the media that things can go wrong. It is well known that fears about immigration tend to be greatest where there is least immigration.

Of course reluctance to acknowledge myths may not be denial but fatalism. Fatalism in believing that voters will always believe that migrants want to come to the UK because of our generous benefit system because it suits their prejudices. Encouraging those beliefs will be in the interests of what will always be a right wing dominated press. Some argue that myths can only be changed from a position of power. But myths are not the preserve of governments to initiate. According to this, over 60% of Trump supporters think their president is a Muslim who was born overseas. [1]

Myths need to be confronted, not tolerated. The initial UK media coverage of the European migrant crisis played to a mythical narrative that migrants were a threat to our standard of living and social infrastructure (to quote the UK’s Foreign Secretary!). This reporting was not grounded in facts, as Patrick Kingsley shows. That changed when reporters saw who migrants really were and why they had made the perilous journey north. It changed when Germany started welcoming them rather than trying to build bigger fences. These facts did not fit the mythical narrative.

The UK government was clearly rattled when it realised that many people were not happy with their narrative and policies. Myths can be challenged, but it is not easy. Policy has been changed somewhat, but attempts are also being made to repair the narrative: to take some of those who have made it to the EU will only encourage more (a variant of the previous European policy of reducing the number of rescue boats), and a long term solution is to drop more bombs. Such idiotic claims need to be treated with contempt, before they become a new myth that the opposition feels it is too dangerous to challenge. Challenging these myths does not imply pretending real voter anxieties about migration do not exist, but grounding discussion and policy around the causes of those anxieties rather than the myths they have spawned.

Yes, the non-partisan media needs to recognise the responsibility they have, and use objective measures and academic analysis to judge whether they are meeting that responsibility. But more generally myths are real and have to be confronted. The biggest myth of all is that there are no myths.

[1] The probability pedants among you who read the link will know that I’m actually making an assumption in writing this!

Greece and other benefit scroungers

Whenever I write a post critical of German views on Eurozone policy, I get comments which can be paraphrased in the following way. Greece (and maybe other Eurozone countries) are incapable of governing themselves properly, and when they get into difficulties Germany has to bail them out, so it is only reasonable that as a price for this Germany should insist on imposing changes to the way these countries do things.

To say such an attitude is inherently wrong (wrong in any possible circumstances) seems to be too strong. The IMF, after all, has played a very similar role many times. Many may criticise the kinds of reforms that the IMF has demanded as part of its conditionality, but to suggest that conditions are never made as part of such a loan package seems unrealistic.

But while conditionality of any kind cannot be ruled out, it can also go far too far. It should never become imperialism, and the choices of a sovereign people should be respected and accommodated, not ignored.

It is clear that the Greek government ran up unsustainable debts, and tried to hide these. As a result, it was bound to default on those debts. As doing so would exclude it from the markets for a time, it was also reasonable to lend (not give) Greece money to enable it to gradually rather than immediately achieve primary balance. Some conditionality to correct any underlying weaknesses in the openness and accountability of the budgetary process would seem reasonable in such circumstances.

Contrast that with what actually happened. First the Eurozone resisted default, and then it was only partial, which meant providing far larger official loans than were needed. The beneficiaries of this were mainly the financial institutions (e.g. Eurozone banks) who would have otherwise lost money. Second, ridiculously severe austerity was imposed, which crashed the economy and made it much more difficult for Greece to adjust. Third, conditionality far in excess of what was required is being imposed.

I have argued before, based on very rough and ready calculations that the fall in Greek GDP since 2010 could be entirely accounted for by fiscal austerity. This conclusion has now been backed up by rather more rigorous analysis in a new paper by Sebastian Gechert and Ansgar Rannenberg. As we both acknowledge, some GDP loss was inevitable because the deficit had to be reduced (and Greece does not have an independent monetary policy which could offset the impact of deficit reduction). However, as always, timing is everything. The paper argues that “most of the costs of fiscal consolidation could have been avoided by postponing and gradually implementing it after the recovery of the Greek economy, due to the lower expenditure multipliers during normal times.”

The delay in default, its partial nature and a degree of austerity that Gechert and Rannenberg describe as ‘biblical’ and which did such damage are all acutely embarrassing for the Troika. But instead of criticism being directed at these governments, we see a narrative that tries to blame what happened from 2010 onwards on Greece itself, and the Greek people in particular. The economy has crashed because the Greek people do not work hard, austerity has not worked because it has not really happened, and there have not been enough reforms. None of this is true, but the narrative seems largely impervious to facts. (On reforms, for example, see here.)

All this reminds me strongly of how certain attitudes to beneficiaries of the welfare state have been encouraged by the UK coalition government. Rather than admit that unemployment benefits had risen because of the recession and the absence of a recovery (itself a result of austerity), the focus became on the personal failings of the unemployed themselves. The media (TV as well as the tabloids) are still full of examples of supposed ‘welfare cheats’, but they rarely put such examples into context: how tax evasion is a bigger problem that benefit fraud, for example.

People do hate the idea of ‘their taxes’ allowing ‘other people’ to get ‘something for nothing’. In contrast tax evasion does not sound too different from tax avoidance, which many people do as much of as they can. Condemning one and ignoring the other may be human nature. What is clearly wrong is politicians playing on these feelings to misdirect anger away from their own mistakes, or undertaking unnecessary or even harmful policies to play to the gallery. A clear case of the latter is the recent increase in benefit sanctions, which are being applied in an excessive and unfair way, greatly increasing the use of foodbanks as a result. That a committee of MPs where the government is in a majority have expressed grave concerns about the policy just before an election gives an indication of the scale of the injustice that has been taking place.

When politicians do this, it is a sign of chronic political weakness: a desperate attempt to cover up past mistakes. There is a strong danger that the same dynamic may occur in the continuing standoff between Greece and the Eurozone. Having encouraged a rhetoric where a virtuous Eurozone has shown nothing but generosity to a feckless Greece, politicians feel compelled to live up to that false narrative by acting tough in negotiations, which does no one any good to put it mildly. When Putin behaves recklessly to boost his popularity and succeeds, we can blame the lack of press freedom. When political leaders in the UK or Germany play the same trick, do we blame the media for playing along or the people for falling for it?