Dear Friend of CEPR,

The country’s leading news outlets – the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio – are going to help CEPR raise the money it needs to keep doing its important work, like warning about the housing bubble when there was still time to do something about it, or showing that the European welfare state protections do not lead to high unemployment.  

Actually, they have not exactly agreed to help, but we expect their cooperation nonetheless.

One of the major untruths in current policy debates is that several euro zone countries are facing sovereign debt crises because of a pattern of profligate spending that led to unsustainable deficits. This is demonstrably not true, since most of the crisis countries had declining ratios of government debt to GDP prior to the crisis. In fact, two of the crisis countries, Spain and Ireland, were actually running large budget surpluses prior to the economic collapse in 2008. 

While the numbers are clear, news reports, columns and editorials continue to refer to out-of-control spending as the cause of the crisis. This has been a topic mentioned frequently in CEPR’s Beat the Press (e.g. here, here and here). The misrepresentation often appears in the context of grave warnings that the U.S. must get its fiscal house in order; a call that usually implies large cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and other important social programs.

We may not be able to stop the media from misrepresenting reality, but they can’t stop us from profiting from their misrepresentations.  In this spirit, we are asking CEPR’s supporters to pledge a certain amount for each time one of these major media outlets wrongly blames the euro debt crisis on government profligacy.

Here’s how it works: You pledge whatever amount feels comfortable – $25, $5, $1 – for each time one of these four media outlets attributes the European debt crisis to government profligacy over the course of the next six months.  At the end of each month, we will email you an invoice indicating the donation owed based on the number of times these assertions appeared. We will include a list of the occasions with links for those who have an interest in checking on the specific statements. (You are of course welcome to cap your contribution in advance, to avoid the risk of an avalanche of inaccuracy on this issue.)  

A major component of CEPR’s mission is to correct misinformation in the media.  As much as we need financial support to do our work, we would be delighted if this fundraiser left us empty-handed. However, if news outlets insist in misrepresenting the facts, we are happy to have them play a role in supporting our work. 

Thanks,
Dean, Mark and the staff of CEPR

* required for submission