The author has been described by News Ltd as an "iconoclast", "Svengali", a pollie's "economist muse", and "pungently accurate". Fairfax says he is a "Renaissance man" and "one of Australia’s most respected analysts." Stephen Koukoulas concludes that he is "85% right", and "would make a great Opposition leader." Terry McCrann claims the author thinks "‘nuance’ is a trendy village in the south of France", but can be "scintillating" when he thinks "clearly". The ACTU reckons he’s "an enigma wrapped in a Bloomberg terminal, wrapped in some apparently well-honed abs."

Monday, July 16, 2012

Ross Gittins slams negative bias in media reporting

Hot on the heels of my post yesterday about Glenn Stevens's excoriation of the quality of general (as opposed to specialist) reporting on the economy in Australia, Ross Gittins echoes the same arguments in the SMH today:

The conundrum is why so many people could be so dissatisfied when almost all the objective indicators show us travelling well: the economy growing at about its trend rate, low unemployment, low inflation, rising real wages, low government debt - even a low current account deficit. And yet the media are full of endless gloom...Increased competition has made the media more relentlessly negative - more uninterested in anything but bad news - which must eventually have some effect on the public's state of mind.

at 11:01 AM