Bad thing Quote by Ha-Joon Chang
““If there are so many successful public enterprises, why do we rarely hear about them? It is partly because of the nature of reporting, whether journalistic or academic. Newspapers tend to report bad things – wars, natural disasters, epidemics, famines, crime, bankruptcy, etc. While it is natural and necessary for newspapers to focus on these events, the journalistic habit tends to present the public with the bleakest possible view of the world. In the case of SOEs, journalists and academics usually investigate them only when things go wrong – inefficiency, corruption or negligence.Well-performing SOEs attract relatively little attention in the same way that a peaceful and productive day in the life of a ‘model citizen’ is unlikely to make front-page news. There””
About This Quote
Source Article: “The Hidden Successes of Public Enterprises”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2015
Public enterprises succeed often unnoticed because media focuses on failures, skewing public perception of their effectiveness.
In simple terms: Successes get ignored, failures highlighted.
Key Takeaway
Seek balanced information beyond headlines.
Themes
media bias
public sector
perception
economics
Mood
critical
inquisitive
Type
analytical
educational
When to use this quote
- evaluating government projects
- reading diverse sources
- policy advocacy
- academic research
- media literacy
Key Concepts
reporting
policy analysis
public enterprise performance
Questions to Reflect On
- How can we promote positive reporting on public successes?
- What mechanisms ensure balanced coverage?
A Different Perspective
Overemphasis on negatives can undermine trust in effective institutions.
![“Joseph Schumpeter emphasized that all analysis in economics is preceded by a pre-analytical cognitive act, called vision, in which the analyst ‘visualise[s] a distinct set of coherent phenomena as a worth-while object of [his] analytic efforts’. He pointed out that ‘this vision is ideological…” quote by Ha-Joon Chang](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/828/ha-joon-chang-3497_dreams_joseph-schumpeter-emphasized-that-all-an_438236.jpg)
