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Paris, May 25th, 2010. The political escalation of the EURO crisis has triggered a massive surge of media coverage in May. Fears of inflation and a loss of stability dominate reporting about the recent situation and the future of the German economy in opinion-leading media. These reports are compounded by tilted view of several European economies: The economic recovery in Germany and France that has been observed from the middle of 2009 on, has been crowded out by the extensive reporting about the economic crisis in Greece. This type of coverage could again trigger a severe loss of trust among consumers and business and stop the further recovery, in the same way as in the case of the breakdown of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

Until the end of April fears of increased inflation and the impact of the EURO crisis on the economy remained way below the threshold of awareness in German opinion-leading media. But the escalation in May has led to a marked change in public opinion: Inflation has jumped to the second rank in the monthly poll by Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, asking for the most important problem facing the nation – basically coming from nowhere. The President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, blamed the German public and especially Germany´s political leaders for this development in his latest interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. They had the duty to explain to Germans in a more clear-cut way, which advantages the EURO rendered to their economy. Matthias Vollbracht, head of economic studies at Media Tenor International, concurs: “The opinion of renowned analysts and economist, that a weaker EURO would initially have a positive impact on the export economy, has been neglected by the media in the last three weeks.”

With a surplus of 60% of negative news in the coverage of the economy with reference to the EURO and to inflation, politicians have indeed set the agenda, but the profound uncertainty that emerged from this reporting threatens to further reduce the trust in politicians and slow down the rebound of the economy. The OECD Forum, which begins tomorrow in Paris with the contribution of Media Tenor as a Knowledge Partner, gives therefore raise to the hope, that future public debates will be more strongly grounded in real hard data and thus less prone to contribute to the emergence of self-fulfilling prophecies.

For this analysis 8,428 reports about the economy have been analyzed in the German media set. 278 reports focused on the EURO, 153 on inflation. The timeframe of this analysis ranged from 1.8.2009 until 19.5.2010.The analysis of international economic coverage is based on 2,330 reports about the Greek, Spanish, French and German economies in the international media set in the period from 1.1. 2009 to 28.2.2010.All media content has been analyzed by trained human coders. Average inter-coder reliability equalled 87% in the IV. quarter of 2009.

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