May 06, 2017
Actually, the article told people that he wanted to spend 50 billion euros. Is that big for the French economy? Would it matter if it were over one year or ten years?
Apparently, the NYT doesn’t think so, since the article never tells people how long a period is covered by the proposal. For those who might care about such trivia, the proposal is for a five-year period, putting it at roughly 10 billion euros a year. Since France’s GDP is projected to average roughly 2.5 trillion euros annually over this period, the proposal would cost approximately 0.4 percent of GDP.
Is this really that hard?
Is there some reason that a reporter covering the French presidential elections can’t tell us the number of years involved in a spending program? It does make a difference.
How about some information, like the share of GDP, that would put the measure in a context that would be meaningful to NYT readers. I know the paper has a well-educated readership, but I am willing to bet that fewer than one in ten could tell you France’s GDP within a 25 percent margin of error.
None of this should be controversial. When she was the NYT’s Public Editor, Margaret Sullivan wrote a very nice column on exactly this point. She got then Washington editor David Leonhardt to strongly agree with her.
What’s the problem here? The newspaper is supposed to be providing its readers with information. Providing a large number without any context is not providing information.
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