• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Go to Positive Money Europe

Positive Money

Making money and banking work for society

  • About us
    • Our vision
    • Who we are
    • History & highlights
    • Contact us
    • There are currently no vacancies available
    • In the media
    • Funding & Annual Reports
  • What we do
    • Educate & empower
    • Research and Policy
    • Campaign & local groups
    • Influence decision makers
    • In the media
    • International Movement
    • Events
  • Resources
    • Videos
    • Publications
    • Local group resources
    • Lobby your MP
    • Organise an Event
    • Policy resources
    • Shop
  • Press
  • Blog
  • Donate
  • Positive Money Europe

Why doesn't the Media understand Money? (video)

by Positive Money

Patrick Chalmers, former Reuters journalist and the author of ‘Fraudcast News: How Bad Journalism Supports our Bogus Democracies‘, was presenting on the 3rd annual Positive Money conference in London:

[youtube height=”390″ width=”640″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zba227LEWTY[/youtube]

 

He explained why he himself didn’t get money:

“Why didn’t I get money?”

–  “I didn’t have to! I didn’t know I could get it, no-one was asking me to get it, and my day-to-day job was trying to find out what a derivative was and how it related to gold.”

And then he listed some further reasons why the journalists and the media don’t understand money:

– Journalists are no smarter than the rest of us.

– They flock to those in power – and he said, “power” can also be expressed in terms of huge amounts of wealth, rather than a formal position.

– It’s not in the interests of those in power to speak to journalists about how money is made and its consequences.

– They are under no pressure to understand from editors (who don’t understand either).

– The audience isn’t clamouring to understand where money comes from. They might not even know that they do not know.

– They are understaffed and under pressure, which leads to fast writing. This situation doesn’t lend itself to deep thought.

– They are pack animals, there are few real contrarians.

– They have their own ideology – which is often that of the paper.

– Fear of backlash (flak).

What we can do, he said was to monitor them, critique errors and omissions, lobby to improve coverage, and find and share alternative media. We can also become the media. We can learn how to be the media ourselves. We can self-educate, stage film screenings and debates, champion local innovation, and engage in citizen journalism.

 

Understanding Money & Debt, Video

Positive Money

Primary Sidebar

Get our latest campaign updates

Recent Posts

  • Quantitative easing “turbocharges” inequality: our evidence to the House of Lords
  • Surprise for Sunak: 60,000 demand climate action on frontpage of his local paper
  • QE or not to QE? Soaring inequality shows it’s time for a new macroeconomic approach
  • Update from Chair of the Board on Interim Leadership
  • Why GameStop reveals the flaws of big finance

Footer

Follow us on social media

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.


Privacy Policy, Terms & Conditions


Positive Money is a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales. Registered number 07253015.
Registered office: 307 Davina House, 137-149 Goswell Road, London EC1V 7ET.


Positive Money Europe