The media keeps busy beating the “recession-any-minute-now” drums here at home so it’s no wonder they don’t have time to report the good financial news in Iraq.
The Other Iraq Surge – December 27, 2007 – The New York Sun
It’s no front-page news that Iraq is a dangerous place. But a capital magnet? The presses have stopped for less. According to the not-quite-closed record book for 2007, Iraqi sovereign bonds, the Iraqi currency, and the Iraqi stock market have each logged astounding, not to mention politically provocative, gains.
(via Instapundit)
The well documented refusal to give good news coming out of Iraq the same level of coverage that the bad news receives is not limited to Iraq or the war. It’s also that this good financial news that doesn’t fit the paradigm. People thriving on capitalism, as opposed to subsisting on western largess, is an unpopular story for a variety of reasons – not just Bush Derangement Syndrome on the part of the media. This isn’t the first time that phenomenon has occurred:
The little-known fact is that businesses are thriving throughout Africa. With good governance and sound fiscal policies, countries like Botswana, Ghana, Uganda, Senegal and many more are bustling, their economies growing at surprisingly robust rates.
Private enterprise is not just limited to the well-behaved nations. You can’t find a more war-ravaged land than Somalia, which has been without a central government for more than a decade. The big surprise? Private enterprise is flourishing. Mogadishu has the cheapest cell phone rates on the continent, mostly due to no government intervention. In the northern city of Hargeysa, the markets sell the latest satellite phone technology. The electricity works. When the state collapsed in 1991, the national airline went out of business. Today, there are five private carriers and price wars keep the cost of tickets down. This is not the Somalia you see in the media.
… What a damning indictment on the “if it bleeds it leads” philosophy of the media and the NGOs who are raising money to help Africa. “We hawk poverty,” one NGO worker admitted. As Ms. Pineau wrote, “There are lots of reasons for the media’s neglect of Africa: bean counters in the newsroom and the high cost of international coverage, the belief that American viewers aren’t interested in international stories, and the infotainment of news. There’s also journalists’ reluctance to pursue so-called “positive stories.” We all know that such stories don’t win awards or get front-page, above-the-fold placement. But what’s happening in Africa doesn’t need to be cast in any special light. The Ghana Stock Exchange was the fastest-growing exchange in the world in 2003. That’s not a “positive” story, that’s news, just like reports on the London Stock Exchange. I imagine a lot of consumers would have found it newsworthy to learn where they could have made a 144 percent return on their money.”
“My independent film was made possible by funding from the World Bank, for which I am extremely grateful. But the bank wouldn’t have had to step in if the media had been doing their job — showing all Africans in all facets of their lives. In a business that’s supposed to cover man-bites-dog stories, the idea that Africa doesn’t work is a dog-bites-man story. If the media are really looking for news, they’d look at the ways that Africa, despite all the odds, does work.”
The more Iraq moves toward financial, as well as military, independence, the less we’ll hear about it.
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