A word on The Economist and CBN

I read with keen interest Henry Boyo’s “The Economist and CBN’s ‘toothpick alert’” published in The PUNCH, about the Central Bank of Nigeria’s policy which denies foreign exchange to importers of some banned items.

Although Boyo’s article was insightful, he however betrayed a lack of understanding about The Economist, even daring to call its article “unedited.”

Like many other people who have written something on The Economist in Nigeria, Boyo started by calling The Economist a “magazine.”

Not only that, with what Boyo called “A scathing assessment of the CBN’s strategy for managing the increasing pressure on the naira exchange rate” by The Economist, and statements like “The unnamed author” and “The anonymous author,” you will think that The Economist selectively hid the “writer’s” identity to avoid a personalised opprobrium expected from the CBN. But that’s not the case.

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The Economist is an international weekly newspaper based in London founded by James Wilson, a Scottish hat maker who was its first editor. Its first issue was published on September 2, 1843. The Economist prides itself as an elitist’s publication. One of Wilson’s famous quotes is “that reason is given to us to sit in judgment over the dictates of our feelings.”

The Economist’s average weekly circulation is about 1.5 million, with about half of its readers in the United States.

The publication belongs to The Economist Group, half of which is owned by Pearson PLC through the Financial Times. There is a group of independent shareholders, including members of the staff, the Rothschild banking family of England, and Exor, the investment unit of the Italian Agnelli family. But Pearson PLC announced on July 24, 2015 that it plans to sell its shareholding to minority shareholders so it can concentrate on its core educational business.

As any regular reader of The Economist would know, articles in the weekly newspaper don’t carry the name of any author. The Economist says “Most newspapers and magazines use bylines to identify the journalists who write their articles. The Economist however, does not. Its articles lack bylines and its journalists remain anonymous. Why?” It says: “Part of the answer is that The Economist is maintaining a historical tradition that other publications have abandoned. Leaders are often unsigned in newspapers, but everywhere else there has been rampant byline inflation (to the extent that some papers run picture bylines on ordinary news stories).” It said in time past, “many publications printed articles without bylines or under pseudonyms to give individual writers the freedom to assume different voices and to enable early newspapers to give the impression that their editorial teams were larger than they really were.”

The Economist says anonymity “allows many writers to speak with a collective voice. Leaders are discussed and debated each week in meetings that are open to all members of the editorial staff. Journalists often co-operate on articles. And some articles are heavily edited. Accordingly, articles are often the work of The Economist’s hive mind, rather than of a single author. The main reason for anonymity, however, is a belief that what is written is more important than who writes it.” Quoting Geoffrey Crowther, its editor from 1938 to 1956, anonymity keeps the editor “not the master but the servant of something far greater than himself…it gives to the paper an astonishing momentum of thought and principle.”

Walter Bagehot (pronounced Bajut), one of its greatest editors immortalised by naming a column after him, said, “The object of The Economist is to throw white light on the subjects within its range.” A former British foreign secretary, Lord Granville, said that whenever he felt uncertain, he would wait to see what the next issue of The Economist had to say. Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, is said to have said: “I used to think. Now, I just read The Economist.”

The Economist prides itself on its covers. The staff say, “We love our covers. We spend a lot of time and energy on them, and have fun doing them…” And hope they are “intriguing enough to persuade somebody walking past a newsstand to pause, think and stop to buy a copy.”

One of my best covers is “Greetings earthlings,” its June 17, 2000 edition. It showed the late Kim Jong-Il, the reclusive North Korean leader, waving stiffly to the people. It stresses the warped mind of the leader.

The Economist says “Two thirds of the globe is covered by water, the rest is covered by The Economist.” So, Nigeria can’t hide from the newspaper. Before Nigeria’s elections, it wrote an article in its February 7, 2015 issue entitled, “The least awful.” With a rider, “A former dictator is a better choice than a failed president.” It went, “Sometimes there are no good options…” But added, “We are relieved not to have a vote in this election. But were we offered one, we would—with a heavy heart—choose Mr. Buhari.” The Economist once called corruption the only thing that works in Nigeria. I don’t know if we can take it to court on that.

Though the CBN may feel “uncomfortable” with The Economist’s beam, it can find equity in the policy of the founder of the newspaper himself who “insists that all the arguments and propositions put forward in his paper be subjected to the test of facts. That is why it is called The Economist.”