2014/03/07/Venezuela, Journalistic Malpractice, and the Paper of Record

title/short::Venezuela, Journalistic Malpractice, and the Paper of Record On Saturday, March 1 the New York Times ran a graphic accompanying its article on Venezuela that showed an “implied inflation rate” of more than 300 percent.
 * when: when posted::2014/03/07
 * author: author::Mark Weisbrot
 * source: site::CommonDreams
 * topics: topic::New York Times topic::Venezuela topic::journalism topic::Cato Institute
 * keywords
 * link: URL::https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/03/07-5
 * title: title::Venezuela, Journalistic Malpractice, and the 'Paper of Record'
 * summary: "NYT violates standards of basic economics and journalistic procedures in reporting on Venezuela inflation"

This is a statistic that was manufactured by the Cato Institute. It is not a meaningful measure of inflation, and there are few economists who would accept it as such. I will explain below why the Times has violated both the standards of basic economics and also standard journalistic procedures with this decision, which as of today (March 6), the editors have refused to correct, despite being presented with explanations of why it is wrong. But first, a note on the significance of this kind of misreporting.

If this bogus statistic is picked up by Venezuela’s opposition media and becomes another “fact,” it could have a significant influence on the actual dynamic of inflation in Venezuela. To the extent that this statistic is believed, many Venezuelans would not want to hold domestic currency and would move their money into dollars or other assets, thus fueling both black market currency depreciation and inflation.