Is it only me, or has economic news stagnated?

Is it only me, or has the media’s leverage of technology allowed its coverage of economic news to stagnate? The technology is now available to plug so many automated feeds into tracking of daily market indicators that the people responsible for economic coverage no longer think about what they are reporting.

Usually, a sure sign that a publication is stagnating is when all its content becomes compartmentalised into departments and sections that can “look after themselves”, with predictable columns, niche specialist pages (the old women’s sections of daily newspapers leap to mind) and standard holes that have to be filled with standard copy. Eventually it looks as if a robot is producing the publication with no human intervention, in either the design or the writing. That’s often the way it appears in economic coverage in print and on radio.

My evidence for this is the unchanging parade of economic indicators. Almost every radio station in the country has an hourly news bulletin, and almost every news bulletin closes with economic indicators. It is clear that the newsreader is reading off a script that has been automatically generated and updated that very minute, thanks to the wonders of modern technology. The compilers of the news simply pass on the same automated feed they have been passing on since the radio station began. So you have the Rand–Dollar, Rand–Pound and Rand–Euro exchange rates, followed by the latest price of gold. It is so ingrained in the structure of news bulletins, the compilers no longer give a second thought to its structure.

Now while the exchange rate may have a direct impact on what consumers will be paying for imported goods in the next couple of months, the price of gold does not. Of course it is a crucial component of the economy, and of course it has a huge impact on export earnings and the health of big business as well as the fiscus, and ultimately also on the exchange rate. But it is not an impact that is immediately felt by the consumer, and therefore not very meaningful to the consumer on a day to day basis.

What does have a huge impact, and one that is felt almost immediately, give or take a few weeks, is the price of oil. Given a steady exchange rate, any increase in the price of oil translates directly into an increase in the price of fuel the next month. And that is an increase that is felt directly by almost every adult South African who relies on their own or public transport, not to mention the impact of the cost of transport on food prices.

Yet, where do we hear the price of oil in economic indicators? Not on 702, not on any SABC station. ClassicFM and Khaya FM are among the exceptions who not only use the above market indicators, but also throw in the highly significant platinum price and the deeply relevant oil price. Is it something to do with their relative youth as radio stations? The fact that there was no legacy news slot that could become automated and then left to look after itself? Perhaps, but then UJ FM, that cool but erratic University of Johannesburg radio station, is as youthful as they get, yet it is still stuck in the old paradigm of exchange rate and gold, when its prime target audience is daily wrestling with the impact of the oil price.

I know the media hates to hear criticism, but guys, this is constructive, and it will help you serve your readers better. Stop letting technology do your thinking for you, and give more thought to what you are feeding us. You’re a strange bunch of bedfellows, at SABC, 702, IOL, Mail & Guardian and News24, but you have all been automated into a technology rut. At a time when we all feel the pain at the petrol pumps, it’s time for you to get out of that rut and keep us informed about the immediate cause of that pain.