Don’t Blame the Messenger
Thursday, June 14th, 2007I recently read an editorial from the Nicholls Worth titled, “Media should cover news that matters.”
In essence, the article argues that there should be more news coverage of “current events” and less coverage of Paris Hilton. It further discusses a proposed boycott of Paris Hilton stories.
At some level, this editorial suggests changing the behavior of the news media, while providing no incentive to do so. I give it absolutely no chance of impacting anything. If the same article appeared in the Wall Street Journal, I would give it slightly higher chance, but still I would put the chance of an impact as vanishingly small. Why?
As you already know, and will be reminded of approximately 200 times throughout the semester, economics is about incentives. If you want to try and learn about the behavior of people, a fine start is to look at the incentives they have. If you want to try and change their behavior, a fine start is to chance the incentives of those people. People respond to incentives; their behavior is typically not “accidental”, it is purposeful.
For example, imagine being the producer of soft drinks. You are considering which flavors to produce. The first option is orange soda, which seems to be pretty popular with your customers. On the other hand, your mother is a big fan of liver and onion soda, which seems to be not so popular with your customers. If you produce the liver and onion soda, how do you expect to do? Would it be correct to say that a firm producing orange soda could be easily persuaded to switch to liver and onion soda?
What does this have to do with Paris Hilton, you ask?
How do you think a newspaper will do if it covers stories that its readers do not wish to learn more about (liver and onion soda). Or if it does not cover stories its readers do wish to learn more about (orange soda)? Is it then an “accident” that the news media is covering Paris Hilton? Would media outlets be willing to stop providing it?
What then is the point of this editorial? If anything, what should the editorial be complaining about?
–CT
Do a Google search of “Adam Smith” and “Invisible Hand” and see what you come up with.
