French Students and American Journalists Jump Over Same Cliff

Never use conspiracy to explain a behavior when simple ignorance will do. I’ve been wondering why the Mainstream Media (MSM) behaves in a way counter to their economic interests. Then I came across an outstanding chat transcript on the Washington Post website about France’s economic problems. There were some interesting similarities. Let me set the stage for you.

The New York Times stock price is heading south, symptomatic of what is going on in most of the MSM. Here’s a 3-year chart for NYT.


France’s economy is tanking and will only get worse. Unemployment is high and the economy is stagnant. Students graduating from college have a hard time finding jobs.

Meanwhile, there are examples of similar organizations that are doing well. FoxNews is growing rapidly. From the State of the News Media 2006 at Journalism.org:

The network evening newscasts had a harder time. Two of the three programs saw revenues decline in 2004 (ABC grew), though projections indicated a possible 10% increase in 2005.

The situation in cable news in general was more robust, but here there was a clear winner. Over all, pre-tax profits in 2005 were projected to grow by 21% to $579 million. CNN, still the financial leader, was expected to account for more than half of the total, $304 million, up 6%. But Fox, gaining fast, was expected to see profits grow a striking 31% to $248 million.

The revenue picture was similar. While CNN led with projected revenues of $878 million, up 5% Fox was expected to enjoy growth of roughly four times that rate, to $615 million.

Ireland is an economic dynamo.

	France	Ireland
Unemployment	10%	4.2%
Growth Rate	1.6%	4.7%
Per Capita Income	$30,000	$34,100
Public Debt	66.5% of GDP	27.5% of GDP

What’s the difference? FoxNews offers a more conservative approach to the news. Whether or not they are truly “fair and balanced” is irrelevant for this post. More than 50% of the country voted for George Bush in the last election. Regardless of his poll numbers now, that gives you an idea of the size of the conservative population in the nation. FoxNews is the only one marketing to this demographic. The others are fighting over a smaller set of customers.

Ireland used to be a socialist basket case and then they lowered taxes and removed onerous regulations on business.

How could you not learn from these examples? Especially when it hits you in the wallet? The answer came from the Washington Post piece.

Arlington, VA: France just guaranteed that they will become even more irrelevant to the rest of the world as their economic power continues to wane. How did their youth develop such a high level of entitlement? Do they not realize that they are competing against firms throughout the world?

Steven Pearlstein: No, they don't realize it, because they don't really want that to be true. They yearn for the days of a relatively closed economy in which France compete only with other countries that have similar systems, with exports such as wine and couture and tourism that have no substitute.

As for the sense of entitlement comes from their parents, who were lucky enough to live in an era where it was affordable, and their teachers, who have the biggest sense of entitlement of all, and from an early age drill into their heads that markets are mean and inhuman and need to be tamed and managed by government. In fact, one of the big initiatives of the Villepin government has been to try to get a more balanced teaching of economics into the schools, which are now bastions of socialist thinking.

In Mr. Pearlstein’s reply, replace the term “France” with “MSM” and you get an equally valid answer.

I’m beginning to think that, like the French students, the MSM is just too dumb to come in out of the rain.

Postscript

A group of milbloggers are trying to help the MSM out of it's wheelchair. Go check out the Milblog wire service.