Reporting Business PDF

REPORTING BUSINESS 3.0 Introduction The Purpose of this unit is to help you gain knowledge and skills on how to report business one of the specialised areas journalists cover. News about business and economics is everybody’s personal business. It should be noted, however, that news about business a...

REPORTING BUSINESS 3.0 Introduction The Purpose of this unit is to help you gain knowledge and skills on how to report business one of the specialised areas journalists cover. News about business and economics is everybody’s personal business. It should be noted, however, that news about business and economics is complicated and boring, and journalists would rather report on politics or sports which are considered more exciting and interesting; but not everything that exciting or interesting is important. 3.1 Objectives By the end of unit three the learner should be able to: 1. Report on business and other financial matters 2. Explain the national and other budgets 3. Report trade/labour unions and related matters 3.2 Reporting on business and other financial matters 3.2.1 Why is business and economic news important? News about business affects the lives of everyone from the banker to the person in a queue to buy bread or rice at the market. More practically, people want to know about the cost of living, job possibilities, interest rates, whether layoffs are imminent in local industries and the value of shares at the stock market exchange. The food we eat or clothes we wear and even shelter are produced by business enterprises and their quality and prices we pay for them are a result of business decisions. News about commerce is as old as the newspaper itself. The news letter of the 21st century were established in the business centres of Europe for the emerging commercial class. But later business became a minor part of the newspaper. However, today editors have now acknowledged the importance of business news. The major driving force behind this awakening was the consumer movement in the 1970s. This resulted in a new kind of coverage for TV and for many newspapers. This was called consumer journalism. Journalists took it upon themselves to educate consumers. Newspapers and broadcast stations went into the market place to find out why the quality of goods and services was declining while prices were steadily rising. Later environmental movement groups also turned public attention and then the media attention to the boardrooms of corporations. Business and economic reporting exploded and many opportunities have opened up. Newspapers publish business sections and have large reporting and editing staff devoted to the subject. Since business stories can be complicated try to introduce the element human interest in the copy. As a business reporter you have a wide range of subjects to cover; store openings, expansions and closings, real estate transactions, new products, construction projects, retirements, layoffs, annual and quarterly business reports, local and national budgets. 1.3.Attributes of a Good Business and Economic Reporter  Specialist who should feel at home with numbers. He should be a specialist who is comfortable with numbers  Should not be frightened by lengthy reports and press releases with rates, percentages and the jargon of the business world  Need to be as objective as any other reporter  Although a specialist, a good business reporter must know much more than the world of finance. He or she should be knowledgeable about other things and make connections 3.4 Sources of information  You have a harder job digging for information than most journalists  The business world is generally secretive and authoritarian. The CEO can easily order the employees not to talk to reporters  Because of competition secrecy is a natural part of business life  Sources include bank officers, chamber of commerce, union leaders, securities, dealers, financial analysts, real estate brokers, business and economics academicians, relevant ministries  A business reporter must also know the two types of companies:  Publicly held: owned by investors who bought its stock Privately or closely held: is usually controlled by a small group or a family. Stock is not publicly traded on an exchange. Information is difficult to obtain. 3.5 Sources of business news 3.5.1 Human sources Good contacts and sources can be made among the following: Bank officers, savings and loan officials, chamber of commerce officials, union leaders and working people, securities dealers, financial analysts, real estate brokers, trade organisation officials, business and economic academicians, relevant ministries e.g. commerce , finance etc. 3.5.2 Physical sources At local level, reporters should make use of city tax records e.g. sales tax shows how much business a firm is. Many local governments issue business licenses.State government also issues business licenses. 3.6 How to cultivate sources On first contact with a reporter, the business source is likely to be wary and as a result, it is often difficult to gain the source’s trust. In order for sources to break down you need to do the following:  Do your homework  Learn what motivates business people  Don’t be afraid to ask the intelligent questions  Don’t ask dumb questions In order to have good background material you have to find people who can put events into perspective and who can clarify some of the complexities you cannot. Caution: Not only must the sources be dependable, they must be independent of compromising connections and affiliations. But such sources are hard to find. The reporter must ensure that background information from such sources is neither biased nor self serving. When quoting a source, note all of the person’s business affiliations relevant to the story. 3.7 Numbers count Many students are attracted to journalism because they like to write and because journalism is concerned with how people get along with each other. These students are interested in the qualitative aspect of life. However, much of what we know about the world and people is derived from qualitative studies. Any would-be business reporter must be able to analyse numbers. You just do not take what you are told as the truth, you have to look through it. One research revealed that more than a third of CEOs regularly lie to the media. 3.8 The human element Because business stories can be complicated, writers should try to introduce human interest whenever possible in their copy. One of the ways of keeping stories as interesting and memorable as possible is by using anecdotal examples to which readers relate. 3.9 The beat The business reporter has a wide range of subjects to cover. Examples include store openings, expansions and closings-real estate transactions, new products, constructions projects, retirements, layoffs, annual and quarterly business reports, local and national budgets. If a newspaper or station has no labour reporter, the business reporter covers labour- management relations and the activities of the labour union. A business reporter should also be aware of trends and developments in the community. 3.10 Selected business and economics terminologies Reporters tend to get intimidated by some terminologies they encounter when covering such areas. 1) Balance of Payments The difference between the total payments into and out of a country in a given period of life. 2) Broker A person who acts as a go between in a transaction involving two or more persons or institutions mainly used for stock- brokers. 3) Capital Different types of capital a) Capital expenditure: the amount paid to acquire an asset b) Capital market: a network of institutions through which the savings and surplus funds of the economy are channelled to commerce and industry. 4) Collateral Security: Payments perhaps in the form of deals to a house or stocks and shares deposited with a creditor to guarantee that a loan will be repaid  5) Depreciation : Fall in values of something 6) Depreciation/slump: When business activity is at a low. Results-high level of unemployment, little borrowing from banks 7) Devaluation: a downward charge in valuation of one currency in terms of others 8) Exchange rate: refers to the price of one currency in terms of another 9) Mixed economy: an economy containing characteristics of both capitalist and socialism 10) Value added tax: A form of turnover tax taking into account the value added by successive processes Exercise: Look for business and economic news stories 1.11.Practical tips These practical tips were developed by Paul Hemp in his hand book titled : Ten practical tips for business and economic reporting in developing economics. 1. Avoid Economic Jargon Read this sentence from a radio news report “The finance Minister called on indigenous producers of industrial, consumer and other products to engage in local sourcing of component materials.”In plain terms: “ the minister urged domestic manufacturers to use domestic raw materials”. For the average reader, economic jargon is both confusing and boring. Such language usually finds its way into print because it is easier to repeat what a bureaucrat banker, economist or press release says than translate it into normal language. Also journalists sometimes like to show off to their readers/ listeners/viewers and they believe jargon will be seen as a sign of their advanced education and intelligence. Hemp recommends that journalists should strive to translate economic jargon into normal language though it is difficult to do so. The goal should be to use simple language for complicated material. So use small words rather than big words, few words, rather than many. However, there is a danger of oversimplification or distortion when you translate economic jargon into normal language. But it can be done by stopping and thinking what the jargon really means. If possible ask a speaker to summarise what he/she is saying in everyday language, this makes the speaker do the translation. 2. Define economic terms  When you cannot get rid of economic jargon, define and explain it. Hemp noted that some terms have such a specialised meaning that to avoid them could confuse rather than clarify. Although earlier on it was suggested that journalists should try to use few words rather than many defining terms takes extra words. But at times clarity is more important than brevity. 3. Use Statistics Sparingly Many people are attracted to journalism because of its quantitative nature. The use of statistics has two aspects. i) a business reporter must be able to analyse numbers. You cant just accept what the CEO tells you. A survey once showed that a third of business executive regularly lie to the media. The second aspect is that business stories should not include too many figures. Only use figures that are crucial to the story. Most readers/listeners/viewers find figures dry and difficult to absorb. Because statistics numb a reader’s mind they should be used selectively. Normally the general reader does not need all the data and an expectant reader usually has them already. Journalists must also be careful when using figures because sometimes it is easy to reverse a figure or jot it down incorrectly, so double check your figures before using them. 4. Compare statistics Put the figures in context by comparing them to something else. Note that a number has little significance on its own. Most statistics can be compared to equivalent statistics from another time such as last year, or the next financial quarter. They can be compared to equivalent statistics from another place like a neighbouring country or a competing company. Sometimes journalists can make big numbers come alive by expressing them in everyday human terms. 5. Turn statistics into stories A reporter must explain the significance and meaning of figures. But this is not always easy. Confronted with raw statistics a reporter has to ask: what does this mean? The answer will make the figure understandable and interesting. 6. Get the other sides to a business story The fundamental journalist principle of “getting both sides to the story” is usually ignored in business reports. Remember that there is usually more than one side to a story and often several others. A single source of information rarely gives a complete picture of a situation. Scepticism is usually required. 1.12.The national budget Although reporting on budgets might seem less interesting than the usual suspects of war, disaster and catastrophe, nothing is more fundamentally important: the national budget provides the fuel – the money – on which all else runs. It sets out a government’s policy priorities in the social, economic and military sectors. Given this central role, it is clear that it will be the prime target of special interests both within the state bureaucracy and outside. The journalist’s job is to shine a spotlight on all expenditures as well as on all sources of revenue, whether from taxation, natural resources or international loans, to provide as much transparency as possible. This will help journalists highlight, in their stories, what kinds of policies the government is pursuing. Ideally, a close look at the budget will help show whether government policies are favoring the rich or the poor and will highlight potential cases of corruption and mismanagement. As the International Budget Project (IBP) makes clear in its Guide to Budget work for NGOs section 4.2 (http://internationalbudget.org/wp content/uploads/guide_to_budget_work1.pdf) governments may rely on budget gimmicks and other accounting tricks to obfuscate the true state of the budget, rather than try to reconcile the many competing claims within a sustainable fiscal framework. This is especially so where the government has items and entitlements such as social security spending that it is committed to fill. Hence the journalist must use his craft as a sleuth to check the credibility of both revenue and expenditure items, and track the various items of the budget throughout the fiscal year. 1.13.Getting the ball out of the scrum The budget, because of its central importance, will be a magnet for groups lobbying for opposing goals. This is good for journalists as it means there will be many sources to investigate. Industry and business, for example, will want tax policies that help their interests. Labor unions and civil society will likely push for social spending to help the less privileged and more spending on health care and education. They may be involved as the budget is being drawn up and will certainly want to comment afterwards so these groups can be helpful sources for journalists throughout the budgetary process. Officials, especially in the financial and economic bureaucracy, are sources to be cultivated, as are the various suitors for budgetary perks, including businesses and industries that have contributed heavily to the campaigns of the ruling parties. Many civil groups, meanwhile, seeking to advance the cause of the less advantaged, will have their antennae attuned to picking up signals that might show the government’s direction. At the very least, they will have their own agenda on what they think is needed and this, balanced with the goals sought by industry, business, or any others in the opposing camp, together with their rationale, can serve as a useful scene-setters and curtain-raisers prior to budget publication. In some countries, natural resources provide much more revenue than taxes. Here journalists have to check with industry, analysts and watchdog groups that revenue projections are realistic, understated (with corruption a possible motive), or overstated to balance the books on paper but portending cuts in expenditure, particularly in social programs, down the line. Here again the journalist’s paramount role comes into play – ensuring transparency, without taking sides, to make sure that all the facts are known. When you can’t see Clearly, availability of information and transparency vary widely from country to country, and this will obviously have an impact on reporting. The IBP carries out an annual survey that ranks budget transparency in 85 countries, based on the findings of civil society organizations. These have shown that the vast majority of countries fail to provide budget information needed for government accountability. Fewer than 10 provide the extensive information needed for accountability, while more than half fail to make public all the seven key budget reports they produce, keeping it for their own internal use or for international donors. Given such secrecy, journalists will have plenty of digging to do – within the bounds of their own safety. The first a journalist may officially learn of the budget in some countries may occur only with information made available to the public at large. In some cases reporters may receive embargoed copies a day or so before publication. But in all cases, by maintaining contacts within the bureaucracy, business and industry, labor and civil society organizations they may already have been able to glean an earlier understanding of where matters are headed (possibly giving rise to pre-publication reports). Above all, they certainly will have had an opportunity to set up a forum for immediate comment, criticism etc. from all sectors of society to include in their budget-day stories, once the document is published. 3.14. Make Budget Stories Interesting, Colorful and Lively Even within the constraints imposed by the most tight-lipped governments, journalists have a crucial role to play in bringing home the true impact of the budget ‘in the field,’ in accessible language and with vivid imagery and examples. Yes, that’s right, vivid! Figures themselves might not be vivid, but when you put a human face on them, that is a different matter. And the journalist must do this by highlighting the full impact, social and otherwise, of these figures on real, living people. That is what it’s all about. While fully bearing in mind the necessity for total objectivity to ensure the journalist’s credibility, the reporter can still – and must – highlight this. If changes in taxation favor the rich and adversely affect the poor, the journalist’s first task is to say so, fully explaining why and how. But equally important, if not more so, is showing, not just saying. If it is true, as the aphorism goes, that a picture is worth 1,000 words in bringing home the truth, then a verbal picture – a skillfully chosen living example with comments of the people actually affected, one way or the other – is worth much more than the sum total of its words. In your very first story on the latest budget write a detailed portrait of a poor family, with quotes, in reaction to the latest changes. Get the reactions of the civil society groups. And never forget to obtain an equally detailed portrait from the wealthy family, or business, that benefits. That could provide yet more telling, biting spice to your story. 3.15. So, what do I do then? Given this overview, then, of the journalist’s role in assuring budget transparency, coupled with the lack of data and transparency in many, mainly developing countries, as well as potential accounting tricks and gimmicks in others, how do you make your report relevant to your audience when you come down to the nitty-gritty? How do you in fact put this human face on the soulless figures? This involves two rubrics: basic guidelines stemming from budget-specific elements as spelled out by IBP’s guides for NGOs engaged in applied budget work, and general principles, which marry these specifics in actual practice with the general rules of good, accessible, explanatory journalism. There will of necessity be a good deal of overlapping both between and within these rubrics, but the repetition will only serve to drive home the importance of the message. 3.16. Basic Guidelines These revolve around reporting on the basics of revenue and expenditure and the actual figures in each budget.   Spell out all sources of revenue whether from taxes, natural resources, international loans etc., and all earmarked expenditures in comparison with the previous year/years. Always remember to take into account inflation, since an increase in absolute terms can mask a decrease in real terms.  Spell out the various taxes used to raise revenue, and their effects on various segments of the population. Regressive taxation tends to favor the wealthy who pay a lesser percentage of their overall income, proportional taxation sees all paying the same proportion, and progressive taxes have the rich paying a higher percentage of their income than the poor. Consumption taxes such as VAT tend to favor the wealthy in that taxes on goods and services represent a much smaller percentage of their total wealth than they do for the poorer sectors. That effect, however, can be mitigated overall if the money raised by VAT is used for services that benefit the poor.  Follow the budget process throughout the year to see whether predictions are being fulfilled. Budget reporting is not just a one-time exercise  Keep in continual contact with all sides in the budget debate for input. These could be international and civil society organizations ranging from the IMF to national groups that can help in assessing the impact of revenue and expenditure. Chambers of commerce, business and industry groups should be equally courted. The more people you contact, the more complete a picture you will be able to paint. 3.17. General Principles Now let’s look at it all from the standpoint of the journalist. You have just been presented with the budget document. So how do you bring to bear the guidelines and principles already mentioned or alluded to above? As mentioned, this will involve a good amount of overlap, but this is important since it is the only way you can impart the true nature and impact of any budget to a general audience. Be a Detective. You are an investigative reporter, a sleuth who is going to extract out of mind- numbing columns of numbers facts that affect individuals on the ground. In fact, you’re not a reporter so much as an auditor and comparative analyst. This involves constant checking with sources of ALL shades of opinion – civil society groups, anti-poverty and other humanitarian organizations, chambers of commerce, business organizations, and government officials themselves. Don’t only look at national organizations. Regional and international bodies can be of great use, too, especially such organizations as the Asian Development Bank, Transparency International, Oxfam, Caritas and United Nations agencies such as the UN Development Programme (UNDP). These can help you track down the claimed sources of revenue from natural resources such as oil, mining, etc. for any shortchanging, as well as for the impact on the least privileged members of society. In many areas such as Latin America Church and other religious groups can be especially helpful. Think small. Budget figures are enormous, often too large for readers, listeners or viewers to take in. A vast jumble or astronomical figures will immediately bring down an iron curtain in their brains. Assume they have the attention span of a snail, rushing to tune in to their blogs, sports or porn channels: you need to hijack their interest. So while your lead paragraph might have an overall number – the big picture – you’ll get much more traction if it also has the small telling detail. And if this detail includes the individual example of one or more of the budget’s impacts with which your audience can identify, you’ll have a better chance of hooking them. An example could include not only the increased overall spending on the military, or health, or education, but the extra tax that this will mean for a family of four earning X amount a year. So-called sin taxes such as tobacco, drink, entertainment, or user fees such as increases in car licenses, also grab the attention. Social impact. Following on the above, a good red-flag element is the budget’s effect on ALL income sectors from the poorest to the wealthiest, on each group sector such as children, women, old, on each business sector such as oil, mining, manufacturing, and on each social spending sector such as health, housing, education etc. As noted earlier, you are going to have much more impact when a reader can identify by feeling the effect in his own pocket, and compare it with other pockets. Who is better off as a result of the budget? Who is worse off? For example, in an analysis of newspaper coverage of the Indian budget recently, Ammu Joseph, an independent journalist and author based in Bangalore, noted that the poor were conspicuous by their absence from budget coverage across all six English newspapers published in Bangalore. ‘Even though most papers claimed that the focus of the budget was on agriculture ("Advantage Farm Inc." and "Agriculture top priority, gets major share" - The New Indian Express; Budget: Focus on farm sector" - The Hindu; "Focus on farm, social sectors - Deccan Herald) no farmers or even agricultural experts were asked for their views,’ he wrote. In fact, far more space was dedicated by all papers to the impact on and reactions from industry, the corporate sector and the stock markets. Meaningless, misleading and lying numbers. Figures can mean little in themselves, their significance infinitesimal to the tale they can convey when put into a context that is underscored by comparisons. For this there are several benchmarks that need to be observed. One of the most important is the absolute amount of a sum. Obviously it has to be compared with the budgets of previous years to gauge any increase or decrease, but in doing so inflation must be factored in to put it in real terms since an absolute increase in currency terms can mask a decrease in actual expenditure. Population growth can also play a role in determining whether, for example, an increase in health or education expenditure even after inflation is really an increase. One useful way of accounting for these factors is by expressing revenues and spending in terms of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). On taxes, the percentages in absolute terms are not going to tell you nearly as much as a relative analysis of what the percentage impact is on the individual’s pocket, perhaps shown as a sort of pie chart of what is left over for each sector of society once generally accepted non- negotiable needs have been met, such as food, clothing, health and housing. Likewise, with other figures the effects must be spelled out. A major consideration in reporting on non-income tax revenues such as VAT, fees and changes therein is not just the figure itself but the projected percentage of a person’s income this could represent at various income levels, and hence the effect it will have on the money in the pocket at different levels of society, with the severity of the impact in reverse proportion to the wealth of the individual. Examples of this should be included in your reporting. A major issue will be: does it take in from the poor proportionately much more than is paid out for services to them. As IBP’s tax guide points out, VAT’s proportional impact may not be as iniquitous as it seems at first glance if the additional income is used for improving the lot of poorer people with increases in health, education and other social services for them. Likewise with projected spending, the overall sum in a given sector may sound either generous or stingy, but it is meaningless unless it is factored against the number of people it is meant to benefit. Here again, comparison with neighbors, and regional and global averages can help to give a much fuller picture. In military spending, comparisons with neighboring countries and with regional averages will help to ‘locate’ the military budget both in absolute terms and as a percentage of total spending relative to the amount on social services such as health or education. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks military spending, and GlobalSecurity.org which compiles data on military topics can be helpful on these matters. Another figure that will need analyzing in a similar fashion is any deficit/debt involved. People tend to dismiss the figure once they have mentioned its size even if it is enormous. If you can break it down to show what impact this is going to have on future years, or generations, perhaps in terms of revenue that will be spent on servicing debt instead of providing services, your audience will stop seeing it more as a free ride. To give your budget figures more resonance, compare them not only with the previous years and projected future years of your own country, but with those of neighboring countries and other countries who have similar resources such as oil-producers (for example, Nigeria with Gabon and Norway and perhaps with a non-oil-producing neighbor like Niger), factoring in such variables as population numbers etc. to give an idea of per capita benefits in relation to the government’s revenue, what proportion each earmarks for health, education etc. For instance, Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country with some 140 million people and its per capita GDP is $700. Gabon, another African oil producer, has barely a million inhabitants and produces much less oil than Nigeria buy its per capita GDP is nearly $6,000. The vast majority of the population, however, is poor, with 90% of income going to the richest 20%. Put numbers in context. Related to the previous point on numbers, you are going to provide a much better context for your budget story, which after all is about the economic and social welfare of all the population, by giving the often iniquitous gap between rich and poor resulting from the unequal distribution of income, including the numbers/percentages of those living at or below given poverty levels. But simply stating this in terms of a dollar figure can be meaningless or totally misleading. There are several reference points that have to be included. First and foremost is what a certain income level can buy in the respective country. Let us say X amount of the population lives on $1 or less a day. $1 in New York won’t even get you a bus or subway ride, but in an African or Central Asian city and many other parts of the world such a journey may only cost $0.05. Thus you have to give this essential contextual element in terms of a basket of services that can include the price of bread or other staples, transportation costs, available education for children and health services for all. For example, a Cuban might have minimal daily income in cash terms and a generally difficult time in transportation etc., but if he pays nothing for health care and education for his children, and little or nothing for rent, then that $1 could go much further than a sum many times larger in another country. Similarly, where a person lives may have an important bearing on interpreting budget figures. If the majority of the population is rural and grows a lot of its own food or has barnyard chickens etc. on a larger scale than the urban population, certain budget elements could have different impacts in different areas. Again as with the poverty level, these are essential context details about overall welfare of a country, which should be the main aim of a socially aware budget. Don’t assume. Another sleuth-like element in budget reporting involves the assumptions the government makes about revenue and expenditure. Never accept them at face value. They may be correct but always check. A healthy skepticism never harmed a reporter. How realistic are these assumptions? Here financial and budgetary experts, as well as civil society organizations with such expertise can help. It is worth checking them against the assumptions of the previous year, which can be weighed against actual performance, to get a track record, as well as against general regional and world economic trends. Faulty assumptions, whether through intention or bad analysis, could provide an excuse later on to cut social spending because the deficit is too high or there is already too much debt etc. Benchmarks. These are very useful both on overall spending and individual sectors for assessing where the country is going. Firstly there are the internal benchmarks, which can be used to evaluate how the government is going with regard to its proclaimed policies. These include comparisons with the previous year or years to see how the budget projections stood up against reality and certainly have a rightful place in a report on the new budget. Then there are the regional benchmarks for comparing with neighbors’ performances. Equally important or even more so, from the social point of view are international guidelines that the country has accepted such as the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These eight goals, adopted at the UN Millennium Summit of 2000 and to be achieved by 2015, commit each country to halve both the proportion of people living on less than $1 dollar a day and that of people who suffer from hunger; ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling; eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015; cut by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five; cut by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio; halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, and the incidence of malaria and other major diseases; halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water, and achieve significant improvement in the lives of slum dwellers (by 2020); and develop a global partnership for development. Many of these are clearly budget-related and with some digging from social and human rights organizations (Oxfam, CARE etc.), if not from the governments themselves, provide a great scorecard for what a government is doing about what should be its principal goal. Another useful overall benchmark is the UNDP’s annual Human Development Report, which is useful for giving you a measure for the distance already covered and that which remains to be run. Other UN agencies can be useful here for specialized data such as the UN World Health Organization (WHO) or the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). This latter’s Innocenti Research Centre produces documentation on the evolving needs of children and can help in producing a context for how the budget affects the lot of children. There are doubtless many other gauges that you will come across in discussing the issues with these bodies. Non-tax revenue. Oil, mining and other natural resources can require extra-sleuthing. These can be wide-open opportunities for corruption, especially if you have a military dictatorship as Nigeria did under Sani Abacha, but also in much less extreme regimes. Clearly checking the reports of the companies involved, BP say, should help. Other international initiatives like Transparency International, Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and Revenue Watch Institute will be very important in such fields. Obviously, caution will be needed in certain non-democratic countries, where espionage charges might be used to prevent sleuthing on possible corruption. Countries like Congo-Brazzaville, Chad, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Peru have civil society groups checking oil revenue, although Congo-Brazzaville has arrested leading civil-society anti-corruption campaigners. Ongoing dialogue. Full budget reporting will require you to double-check not only government claims, assumptions and figures with opposition politicians, civil society, anti- poverty, humanitarian and human rights organizations, but then to check back their claims with the government. This to-ing and fro-ing of course is an age-old practice of good journalism, but it can be doubly rewarding in the case of budget reporting insofar as fatuous comments from officials who try to counter serious arguments that undermine their budget assumptions will only serve to highlight the budget flaws themselves, if there are any. You might find yourself the virtual moderator of a full-scale debate – all the better to bring out full transparency. What will also be ongoing will be your own auditing of the budget throughout the year: is it on track to meet the assumptions, are certain expenditures being short-changed etc. It’s about the people! Once again, the budget insofar as reporting is concerned is not really about figures; it is about people, the way the figures affect people. This is the touchstone for your audience. Whenever you can meld in the translation of these figures into personal, individual terms, you will find a sure way of grabbing your audience’s attention. And since it is about people, a lot of the points above, of necessity, overlap and run into each other. You should always ask yourselves: what does this mean for the individual, for each sector of society, from the poorest to the wealthiest, as well as for the country as a whole, etc. And get actual quotes from the affected families about what this means for them. As earlier alluded to, the journalist must be able to do a pre and post budget analysis. Predictions or expectations as regards the new budget must be made and this can be done by also making comparisons with past budgets. When the budget is passed, the reporter should be able to critically analyse it bringing out the strongest and weakest aspects therein.