By Douglas K. Smith, Executive Director of The Punch Sulberger Program at Columbia School of Journalism
Words matter. Or, more to the point, the meaning of words matter. Take ‘unemployment’. Notwithstanding years of persistently pointing out that which is the Bureau of Labor Statistics U3 series, severely understates real unemployment, nearly all accounts, whether in mainstream media or alternative media, continue using U3. Ask all but the technically proficient what unemployment is today in the US, and you’ll hear 9.7% or 10% — not the 17% to more than 20% that more accurately describes the economy. Pundits and observers fret over how the culture seems to have just ‘accepted’ 10% unemployment as the new normal. Well, in part, this arises because of the ‘unemployment’ sleight of hand.
Were journalists practicing core journalistic values such as accuracy and objectivity, 9 out of 10 pieces would point to 17% to 20% un- and underemployment — and we’d then have a chance to see what the culture is ready to accept as ‘normal’.
This linguistic insanity extends far beyond unemployment. Consider another longstanding abuse of meaning now popping up again in the context of Ireland’s woes. In nearly every article and post about the Irish crisis — regardless of whether written by those for or against the specific measures — we keep reading that the steps being taken seek to save the ‘banking system’. This is the same phraseology that was and is on view in the US dating back to the dark days of October 2008.
As with ‘unemployment’, sophisticated and deeply knowledgeable people like Yves and so many of her readers and peers, understand that the core objectives at work are less about ‘saving the banking system’ than they are about three rather important ‘other things’: saving the TBTF banks, saving the bondholders and derivative gamblers and, perhaps mostly, about saving the highly interconnected dealer markets that are the cancer of the ‘free market’, deregulated ‘banking system’.
More than 99% of people — including those in government — are not sophisticated in financial matters. To them, the phrase ‘saving the banking system’ means saving the classic and now almost quaint role that banks play in financing the real economy as opposed to financing and participating in the casino that has engulfed financial markets. This means that every single time a journalist — whether mainstream, blogger or otherwise — describes steps taken in Ireland — or in Europe, the US or elsewhere — as directed at ‘saving the banking system’, readers and those to whom readers talk are entirely misled. Entirely.
To the likes of Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke — as well as ECB president Jean Claude Trichet and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble — this is all like a good dream — either because (1) it enables their utter and cynical manipulation of meaning; or, worse (2) they are so cognitively captured that they, scary as it would be, cannot distinguish ‘saving the banking system’ from ‘saving the casino’.
It really shouldn’t be this hard. Yes, it can take some effort to understand the difference between, say, U3 and U6 unemployment. And, yes, it can take a bit of effort to see through ‘saving the banking system’ to the real objectives at hand. But, the journalistic solution that is actually quite cool not to mention convenient, can be found in links and widgets and macros and more. All journalists and the enterprises for whom they work need do is create an easily linked to library that, each time the words or phrases are typed, either substitute the far superior set of real meanings or, at least, allow readers to link to them.
Again, it is really not that hard. Yet, until we begin to see the actual meanings instead of the meaningless and misleading phrases, we’ll continue to walk blindly into what may be a dream for Geithner et al but is a nightmare for the rest of us.
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Actually, it isn’t just a case of linguistic insanity (or really politics), what’s far more pernicious is that this is yet another of those methodological problems that you’ve already done so much to point out exist on the side of theory, only then on the site of data aggregation and collection. And these are everywhere. GDP as an assumed indicator of economic health (while it doesn’t distinguish between borrowing and savings as the source of investment) is a useless tool, yet economists have been reading it during the entirety of the “Great Moderation” as though it told them that all structural economic problems were solved. Similarly with the stock market, the health of which supposedly implies the health of “american companies”, where that in turn stands for “companies who hire american workers”, while the “record profits” they declare because firing workers are also assumed to reflect on the health of the US economy, etc..
While it may be that these data are still kept and looked at in the disaggregated state somewhere, it seems to me that many if not most economists are using these abstractions as the data that they want to try to model, rather than the underlying stuff (either because it is similarly assumed to be too complex or for other reasons).
Were journalists practicing core journalistic values such as accuracy and objectivity….
It sounds like Doug also needs to stop misapplying the word journalist. If the definition of a journalist is one who applies those values, then it follows that we have very few journalists left, as opposed to Goebbels-type propagandists, careerist stenographers, hagiographical bootlicks, and of course flat out neoliberal ideologues. Leonhardt at the NYT, for example, has been making his big push to become austerity hack #1.
So real commentators on this subject would need to use something like my convention of putting terms in Orwell quotation marks: Scahill, Taibbi, and a handful of others are journalists, while everyone else is a “journalist” at best.
Referring to the 17 – 20% “un- and underemployment” here seems like a sleight of hand in and of itself. While it may be true that this is the case, it uses a separate measure that is not widely recognized. As an example, for consistency’s sake, we would have to revisit a period of what everyone assumes is stable economic growth. Thus the 4.2% unemployment witnessed during Clinton’s last year in office is not really so great, right? I don’t know what the un- and underemployment metric would be, but surely higher than 4.2%.
The point is that we must continue to measure apples-to-apples with a metric like unemployment. To change our standard in the middle of the game would be a real sleight of hand and scare tactic, exacerbating a situation which everyone recognizes to be sour.
They are swallowing the underlying assumptions, which in this case are a lie. I’ve been having trouble with this lately, myself – had to turn off the radio the other day when a normally reputable news organization got into describing very colorfully why the deficit is a serious problem, and we need austerity measures and to gut Social Security. They said “The US is just like a household,” and I couldn’t listen any more.
You couldn’t be more right: the more these lies are told the less we have the linguistic tools to describe what is being done to us. It is double-plus ungood.
Ask all but the technically proficient what unemployment is today in the US, and you’ll hear 9.7% or 10% — not the 17% to more than 20% that more accurately describes the economy.
17.1% doesn’t more accurately describe the economy. I agree its important to remember that a significant proportion of people are underemployed, but U5 is at 11.1%.
This is the important sentence:
“Were journalists practicing core journalistic values such as accuracy and objectivity, 9 out of 10 pieces would point to 17% to 20% un- and underemployment — and we’d then have a chance to see what the culture is ready to accept as ‘normal’.”
Except its preceeded by the following:
Ask all but the technically proficient what unemployment is today in the US, and you’ll hear 9.7% or 10% — not the 17% to more than 20% that more accurately describes the economy.
No it doesn’t. And I have no idea where this 20% comes from.
I would agree that journalists should mention the underemployment figures, and I think at the very least they should be using the U4 figures. But to argue, and in such a deceptive way, that we should be using underemployment figures as if they described unemployment is… Well if there was a Fox News on the left, I’m sure its the kind of behaviour they’d engage in.
“No it doesn’t.”
I think descriptions of the economy’s state of health need to be thoroughly discussed, not dismissed quite so flatly. Under- and unemployment are very relevant to that discussion, as are wages, environment, and a whole host of other factors.
And why is that prior sentence more important than, or unqualified by, the paragraph I quoted? To me it qualifies the sentence you feel to be key, exactly in the way you then welcome:
“I would agree that journalists should mention the underemployment figures”
“But to argue, and in such a deceptive way, that we should be using underemployment figures as if they described unemployment is…”
That was not my reading of the article.
At best you have 17% which is underemployment (where does he get 20% from?), but its not right to say that this more accurately defines the economy. The two numbers together more accurately define the economy, but out of the two, the unemployment figure is the more useful. If one must choose a number, which Doug apparently thinks necessary.
The difference in U5 and U6 as indirectly indicated by the household survey is in U5 there are 7 million fewer workers at full and part time jobs, and U6 includes an increase of 4 million workers in part time jobs less than 34 hours a week.
Putting the number of people affected, and how severely is a better picture than just U3, U5 or U6 percentages.
With total wages down less than 3 percent, the average wage income of those still employed has increased. The employment income pie shrunk 3 percent, while there were 8 percent fewer people at the full employed table.
I will add to Reprobate’s reply to Matt’s
“With total wages down less than 3 percent, the average wage income of those still employed has increased. The employment income pie shrunk 3 percent, while there were 8 percent fewer people at the full employed table”
by noting 1)Matt is ignoring the growth in population in the past two years which I would figure would be around 2% or better; and 2) that “average wage” will be significantly skewed by the exceptionally large bonuses being paid out to the upper few percentage of the population. The great majority of the population are realizing little or no increase in income.
Thanks, same picture, just different view points. And compare 160 Billion in Banker bonuses to about 6.4 Trillion in wage income. 4 percent of wage income in the US is banker bonuses? What is that?
Your reading appears pretty skewed. The big difference between U3 and U6 is not underemployment but the failure of U3 to include discouraged workers. The U6 definition is consistent with older definitions of unemployment, much more consistent with metrics used in the Great Depression.
I’m complaining about his use of U6. I’m fine with using U4 and possibly U5 (its an unreliable stat in many ways), but that only adds about 1%.
U6 is not unemployment, its underemployment. Different things.
In determining what freedom there is to report the facts and ‘tell it like it is,’ isn’t power the most important factor? I’m sure all mainstream media outlets are severely restricted in the degree of ‘truth’ they can utter, regardless of expertise, because those holding the purse strings have more say than morality or tradition saying journalism should be this or that way.
A friend of mine was pretty high up at the Deutsche Presse Agentur. She prided herself on honesty and accuracy (to the extent she was actually able to practice such), but ‘streamlining’ and ‘efficiencies’ meant she was recently fired. This is of course but one mundane anecdote and is absent many details, but the fact is that money and ‘the bottom line’ have priority, something we experience again and again. And the idea that quality reporting sells is a quaint anachronism nowadays, “nowadays” meaning over recent decades (though the Internet and blogs such as this are introducing a new model less susceptible to monetary control).
As the saying goes, “Geld regiert die Welt” (“money rules the world”), and private interests are by far the majority creators of money, have been for centuries. Change that system to something more reasonable and just, and many of the problems described in the article would fade away.
Who gets to define what is meant by the terms ‘reasonable and just’?
Maybe Doug Smith already has the link “reasonable and just” ready for us ‘truth seekers’? After all: it’s not ‘that hard’.
Me, and only me!
Seriously, I pondered how to express “reasonable and just,” because I know what a minefield this area is, yet I believe very strongly that a simplified money system (money spent into existence by govt), allied to very different socioeconomic goals — such as environmental health, lower crime rates, higher literacy, relevant education etc. — would take care of the “reasonable and just” side of things. Call it the invisible hand guided by another set of systemic properties, rather than greed and so-called rational self-interest. As you no doubt know, the current money system was designed by us humans. Redesign by us is therefore possible, and very desirable since the current model is a bear-pit for corruption and rank criminality.
Man is a moral animal, and while human morality has cultural flavours, things like fairness and justice are deep needs within us, needs which cross race, religion, nationality and class. Let’s set up a system which acknowledges this and gives it cultural space to flourish.
Here in the San Francisco Bay area, and, I suspect, in most metropolitan areas, large swaths of workers are are contractors: 1099ers. My personal observation is that there is a high rate of unemployment and underemployment within this group. Do anyone have a sense of the size of this slice of the labor market and how it is reflected (or not) in the unemployment statistics?
I think Yves rightly calls this distortion of reality “myth-making.”
It’s difficult to counter the myth-makers because they don’t really lie, they exaggerate the importance of a certain set of facts. Then they boil that down to catch-phases that deftly capture the essence of the myth and add tie-ins like “the American people know that . . .” to give the myth credence and sideline critics.
Properly brain-washed, many Americans are sympathetic to arguments like: we have to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest to get this economy moving again but to be fiscally prudent, we can’t extend unemployment; and TARP was a success!
“All journalists and the enterprises for whom they work need do is create an easily linked to library that, each time the words or phrases are typed, either substitute the far superior set of real meanings or, at least, allow readers to link to them.”
Really? Termed the “Ministry of Truth” perhaps?
Or Wikipedia.
Or Economics 101.
But I think it falls on people with the desire to educate and a bit of free time to visit the comments section in each poorly-vetted article and help the news writer out with some definitions.
People like us. ; )
Shall we then make it our mission, each and every one of us, visit one of the articles in Yves’ Links, or any article we can find on the crises and volunteer a free lesson in economics in the comments section? I know I’m game.
Here’s what I came up with for you to copy-paste to any sketchy articles. Feel free to modify it to suit yourself!
This definition of unemployment (U3), only tells part of the story. There is a much better definition of unemployment that counts unemployed, underemployed, and discouraged people in the workforce called “U6 unemployment.”
U6 unemployment is at 16%, and is increasing even more rapidly than U3 unemployment.
The “Unemployment” entry at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment) has more information about how to thoroughly measure unemployment.
Why do you assume that the article is ‘poorly vetted’? The multilateral exchange system is being driven home by just such vehicles.
An article that pushes the party line that U3 is a representative picture of unemployment is substantially misleading. U6 gives us an accurate picture of the situation.
Just because we’ve used U3 for a long time doesn’t make it the best measure.
Also, stock market != economy. So what if the Dow is at 14000, if I can’t pay my bills?
Getting these facts out to the public is important, so they can make informed decisions. The bogus assumptions are what let the Fed bail out banks instead of taxpayers.
Smith’s assertion is not one that regards alternative viewpoints: Smith’s assertion is that the alternative should be unspoken.
“More than 99% of people — including those in government — are not sophisticated in financial matters.”
According to the substance of the essay, twenty percent of the people do realize that they do not have a job. Eighty percent do realize they are lucky to be working. But, perhaps, most do not understand the sophisticated repo market operations of the NYFed. Is that the onus to which this phraseology refers:
“perhaps mostly, about saving the highly interconnected dealer markets that are the cancer of the ‘free market’, deregulated ‘banking system'”
http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed04.html
Confucius. 2500 years ago, was asked what would be his first act, if given complete power. He replied “The rectification of names” which means calling things accurately what they are.
Still a good first step.
Actually, nominal definitions (like names) posit things/entities by what those things/entities are not. It is the basis of social grouping (categories) to define itself (the group) by exclusion. Truth most often masquerades as assumption: indeed, truth could be called the assumptive shadow of the nominal. If we see the church as problematic in this regard, why would we cede the dominion of church to state?
Or has that already occurred?
It’s not really that hard: but is it seemly? I mean, even for the ‘collective good’?
Smith uses this phraseology to define the nominal ‘good’: “the rest of us”. The assumption in the phraseology ‘the rest of us’ is just as misleading in the context of his essay as the very ‘journalistic’ phraseology with which he takes umbrage. “The rest of us” relies upon the idea that ‘us’ is within the peer group of Smith, Yves, et.al. But, of course, nothing could be further from Smith’s truth. For ‘us’ are those who NEED the ministers of truth to ascend to Mt. Olympus and define meaning, returning to ground ‘us’ in all that is rational (real) as delineated by necessity. Does Smith include himself with us? Or is he merely playing with words?
“Were journalists practicing core journalistic values such as accuracy and objectivity, 9 out of 10 pieces would point to 17% to 20% un- and underemployment — and we’d then have a chance to see what the culture is ready to accept as ‘normal’.”
Doug does not understand how extreme the government propaganda media streams have become, his concept that the MSM should be discussing U6 rather then U3 reflects our obsession with financial babble generated by central government statistics. American culture promotes commercial successes over other cultural norms and has little or no room for deadbeats,losers,homeless,or unemployed. To further make my point regarding the MSM as propaganda I bring up an old bit of history that reflects both the media’s role in supporting government policy and creating feedback to continue that policy. Notice that accurate information was generated by the media years after the event and that timeline won an award!!!
“It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.”
On March 16, 1968, a company of U.S. soldiers went into the village of My Lai 4, in Vietnam. A soldier later testified, “The order we were given was to kill and destroy everything that was in the village. It was clearly explained that there were to be no prisoners.”
Over 400 Vietnamese were killed in the massacre at My Lai. The name of the village became a symbol of U.S. brutality and the U.S. tried to portray it as an action by rogue soldiers. But as historian Howard Zinn writes, “My Lai was unique only in its details.”
In 2004, the Toledo Blade newspaper, won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting on atrocities committed more than 35 years earlier by the U.S. Tiger Force unit in the Vietnam War.
“Women and children were intentionally blown up in underground bunkers. Elderly farmers were shot as they toiled in the fields,” The Blade reported. ” Prisoners were tortured and executed–their ears and scalps severed for souvenirs. One soldier kicked out the teeth of executed civilians for their gold fillings.”
In his book Flower of the Dragon, Richard Boyle, a journalist who went to My Lai to investigate the massacre, says:
“My Lai was not the act of one man. It was not the act of one platoon, or one company. It was the result of an ordered, planned and well-conducted campaign conceived at high command levels to teach a lesson to the villagers of Quang Ngai province. The killing, of course, is part of a definite political strategy, a strategy usually described as the ‘pacification’ of Vietnamese villagers.”
Can any readers identify a book, article or blog which rather completely (but not necessarily in depth) exposes the statistical myths surrounding the economic indicators.
If we are to investigate “the truth,” might we not find an accurate “dictionary?”
Here’s a good one from Kevin Phillips.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/article473596.ece
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All nightmares come to an end, the collapse of the United States currency in 2011 will awaken the masses from there slumber. “For how can you sleep when your bed is burning.”