I feel like I’m the one who’s being negative, but I just don’t understand why the media don’t shout the Good News from the rooftops?!

The Irish economy has emerged from recession.  The RTE website was so depressing, starting with the headline…

‘Recession over’ suggestions rejected

Thursday, 17 December 2009 17:53

New figures show signs that the Irish economy remained weak in the third quarter of this year, even though gross domestic product actually grew slightly during the three-month period.

This sparked a debate about whether the country had come out of recession, as the technical definition of a recession is two quarters in a row of falling GDP.

The Central Statistics Office said the economy, measured by GDP, shrank at an annual rate of 7.4% in the third quarter, slightly less than the 7.9% drop in Q2.

GDP compared with the second quarter showed a small rise of 0.3%. But as GDP includes profits made by US multi-nationals based here, many economists prefer to focus on gross national product (GNP). This showed a quarterly fall of 1.4% and an annual drop of 11.3% in the third quarter… and so it continued, explaining how disastrous the Irish economy was!

RTE News last night failed to say anything, The Indo and Irish times carried snippets on the side, addressing the issue in similarly depressing terms… can anyone explain to me why?

To get a balanced view I switched across to Sky News where the first thing I saw on the ticker-tape at the bottom was “Irish economy emerges from recession”.  The BBC website didn’t confuse us with 7.4% drops, they simply said the Irish economy grew by .3% (1.2% annualised) in Quarter 3 and had emerged from recession ahead of the UK economy.

Nobody is trying to say we don’t have problems.  Goodness knows we are aware of the national debt, unemployment and the rest, but what’s wrong with at least telling us the truth… good and bad?

My article (at the bottom) was printed in the Irish Times and I got a great response from our business colleagues who rang, emailed and told me face to face.  I understand the IDA posted it on their intranet.  These people clearly have an interest in the economy doing well, and an interest in Ireland Inc looking good to international companies and investors.  However, some readers seemed to prefer the constant negative take that the media constantly runs…  As a business leader, I’ve learned that it’s important to encourage others to keep a balanced view of the bad AND good news and I’m telling you now that:  Ireland came out of recession Quarter 3, Quarter 4 will be even better, and the future for Ireland Inc is rosy!

This entry was posted on Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 12:25 pm and is filed under Economy, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.