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.
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.”
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