The world’s most prestigious publications seem to agree that the return to a ‘new normal’ following the pandemic marked one of the most economically turbulent few years so far. In fact, any report on the period of global recession that has dawned with the new decade is bound to read like a doomsday report. The issues that affect the economic forecasts today would not have been misplaced in a newspaper during the cold war. Rising inflation, trade wars, and the fear of nuclear warfare are all old demons that the world once optimistically imagined long put to rest. On the other hand, the economic stagnation (affectionately coupled with persistent inflation to coin the dubious new term, ‘stagflation’), unsustainable levels of debt, low and decelerating growth figures, low global investment, and flagging hope in our ability to defeat the climate crisis are relatively new phenomena across the global economic landscape.
Clear as Mud: News Reports on the Global Recession
It is difficult to say whether reports on the evolving situation bring the harsh reality closer to home – or banishes it entirely to the realm of macroeconomic jargon. A quick search on the world wide web puts the entire wealth of human understanding about the global recession at your fingertips, but the most meticulous of analysis seems to be entirely devoid of any meaning. The time frames used for measuring the scope of the recession: the short term, the medium term, and the unforeseeable long term all negate the impact unfeeling numbers have on the people crushed beneath them.
The inflation crisis for example, is often described qualitatively in relation to the supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic and the sudden surge in economic activity that immediately followed it. However, inflation is more than just another macroeconomic metric – the inflation crisis is a cost-of-living crisis. For many, rising inflation poses a significant challenge in making economic choices for their household. The choice for one person may be as simple as foregoing concert tickets to make this month’s rent – unfortunate, but not unmanageable. For others, it could be the choice between getting a pressing ailment immediate medical attention or putting a meal on the table.
Rising inflation means high prices, which eat away at the value of real wages and savings, leaving households the poorer for it. The effects are not felt equally either – as mentioned before, low and middle income households are the most affected by rising cost of goods, and the difference in the choices they have to make when compared to their better off peers is acute. Unfortunately, the impersonal language used in most media to report the economic outlook often presents this information using jargon, difficult stats, and abstract economic concepts. While the data is essential to get a grasp on the magnitude of the situation we experience today, the over emphasis on numbers while isolating those numbers from lived experience often lead to a lack of empathy towards the people who live in difficult situations.
Real World Effects of Unempathetic Reporting
Such dehumanisation of very real social issues in the media poses significant ramifications for their consumers. For one, the everyday reader becomes desensitised to their own plight within the context they live in. The sense of helplessness and apathy this can cause disempowers the individual from actively taking part in breaking the vicious economic cycle they are trapped in. On the other hand, those with the ability to make greater economic impact through the decisions they make, such as policymakers and influencers, can become disconnected from the consequences of their actions on society. More comprehensive and human-centred reporting is essential to drive understanding on the micro-level impact of macro-level policies.
To name but one example, ‘large-scale involuntary migration’ is an economic euphemism often employed to describe one of the impacts of the global recession we see today. In reality, the term describes a situation where individuals, families and in some cases, entire communities are forced to uproot their entire way of living due to the inability to make ends meet. An individual or community is often forced to do so due to the combined pressures of economic issues such as long-term unemployment, reduced or no access to essential services, deteriorated essential infrastructure and a sustained decline in their quality of life. The disruption that ‘involuntary migration’ causes on an individual’s life is simply unquantifiable, its effects ranging from the physical to the mental. Unfortunately, the nature of the problem is such that the economically displaced are difficult to quantify numerically or capture geographically, which means that this tragedy of many individuals’ lives do not even merit a statistical representation in most ‘recession reports’.
Interestingly enough, most reporting on the global recession try to deliver their emotional punch by expressing hope for the future. As might be expected, this is usually expressed through market performance and macroeconomic growth forecasts. The necessity for sensationalism in the media often leads them to neglect individual stories in order to prioritise on bigger numbers. These big numbers usually lead to reportage on stock market performance, corporate financial wellbeing, and the like instead of the human stories that turn the economic tide.
Reasons for Dehumanising Reportage on the Global Recession
There are of course a variety of reasons that influence this kind of reporting.
- Corporate influence on the media
First and foremost, media outlets are influenced by commercial interests, such as sponsorships, advertising revenue, and paid reporting. This leads newsmedia to take a corporate perspective on the information they are presenting. In most cases, they will even prioritise news reports and takes that reflect the interests of corporations that they benefit from. This has the downside of downplaying the very real human element that economic crises overshadow.
- The difficulty of capturing the human element
Truth be told, most journalists and reporters have far better access to market reports and corporate executives than they do to the individuals impacted by the information they are reporting. Numbers can also be expressed appealingly in a myriad of ways, such as in percentages, fractions, through visual representations and the like. Gathering and collating information through interviews, group discussions, and intense grassroots level research is far more time consuming. The writing process too may be emotionally consuming and tiring. Coupled with the limited resources that the media outlet may have at its disposal, it is only too easy to be tempted to focus more on easily accessible, publicly available, public and private sector reports.
- Troubleshooting approach
When the emphasis is not on numbers, mainstream reports tend to look at the many facets of the global recession in terms of a problem that needs to be solved. This leads to overgeneralizations and simplifications that ignore the structural causes behind the present crisis. This has the unfortunate effect of once again instilling a sense of helplessness in the individual as the spotlight is shifted from systemic issues towards an apparent inability to achieve quantifiable targets. Media also sometimes takes a troubleshooting approach in presenting economic crises as a problem to be solved by certain individuals and groups. This can overshadow the struggles faced by ordinary people in their day to day life.
It is important that responsible news media strive to strike a balance between reporting on economic crises and the very real human struggle that such a crisis triggers. Attempts should be made to integrate lived experience with the data on the socioeconomic consequences of recession. This will make for a more empathetic and comprehensive narrative that ensures that the human impact remains central to economic crisis reporting.
(Theruni Liyanage)