Everybody makes omissions including the mass media. Well, that’s a normal thing. It is impossible to avoid mistakes wherever there is the human factor. But when the mistake changes the content of the publicized information and when the other outlets re-publish this information on the next day it becomes a theme of discussion. That is when it becomes insane.
Such an insane incident took place yesterday. One of the famous online sources posted the following news, “Mercer: In Yerevan life has become cheaper during the past year.” The media source referred to the report of Mercer research center, which periodically publicizes reports on the list of the most expensive cities. Now we will quote this part of the news, “Life in Yerevan has become a little cheaper compared to the last year. At least this is what the report of Mercer research center says. According to the survey with its expensiveness Yerevan occupies the 167th place on the list of 214 cities. According to Mercer life in Yerevan is cheaper than in Baku (which ranks 48th on the list) but it’s more expensive than Tbilisi (191st place).” The news about the cheapness of life would minimum cause laughter among the reader, who at least once a month goes to the store. We were also surprised why Mercer could register deflation of costs in Armenia if even the official statistics says that there has been 9% inflation in Armenia during the past 12 months. The same website helped us to find explanations. In order to clarify our doubts we visited the website. “The survey covers 214 cities across five continents and measures the comparative cost of over 200 items in each location, including housing, transport, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment. Is the world’s most comprehensive cost of living survey and is designed to help multinational companies and governments determine compensation allowances for their expatriate employees. New York is used as the base city and all cities are compared against New York. Multinational companies have long understood the competitive advantage of a globally mobile workforce, though the enduring challenge is to balance the cost of their expatriate programs. Currency fluctuations, inflation, political instability and natural disasters are all factors which influence the cost of living for expats. It is essential that employers understand their impact, for cost-containment purposes but also to ensure they retain talented employees by offering competitive compensation packages. During the period of data-collection for this year’s survey the world witnessed an incredible number of natural disasters and political upheavals that have all affected the lives of expatriate employees to some extent. Currency fluctuations and the impact of inflation on goods and services – gas in particular – have led to some reorganization of the ranking,” says the director of the organization Natalie Metral. However, we got even more confused by this explanation. The report registered the prices of March 2011 and March 2010. And last year in the same period USD rate was higher (it even reached 400 AMD for a short time) than this year in March. And the slump of the USD rate means that the life in Armenia for a foreigner becomes more expensive. For example, if the hotel stay per night is 60 thousand AMD and last year the foreigners had to pay 150 USD, this year they will have to pay 162 USD. In a word, this explanation didn’t help us and we found the official press release of Mercer website. To our surprise, there was nothing specific on Armenia as opposed to the title of the Armenian mass media outlet – “Mercer: In Yerevan life has become a little cheaper during a year.” We thought that even if there was nothing specific on Armenia there must be some analysis on the table where all the cities are placed. It turns out that instead of shifting down on the list Armenia shifted up by three points. Armenia rose to 167 from 170 because this list is built on the principle of upside down. The lower the rate is the cheaper the price is. It turns out that according to Mercer the life in Armenia has become more expensive. The interesting thing is that they were not mistaken about the positions of Baku and Tbilisi. Baku reached 48 from 36 and Tbilisi – from 179 to 191. It means that in the two cities Mercer really found some fall in price in the mentioned cities unlike Yerevan. We could have considered this just a slight omission. It happens to everyone, right? But after that we just wanted to find out where the Armenian website found the explanation of the representative of Mercer about the three cities of Caucasus when we already saw that there is nothing like that about Armenia. After carefully reading the text on the section of Europe, Middle East and Africa we finally found the words of Natalie Metral. “Ms Constantin-Metral commented: “In most Western European cities, the cost of living for expatriates has remained relatively stable over the last 12 months. However, many of the region’s cities have still dropped in the ranking. In large part, this is because all cities are compared to New York and price increases there have been more significant than in most European cities. Some reduction in accommodation costs, due to the economic downturn, has also been behind changes in rankings for select European cities – most notably Athens and Barcelona.” Mercer is a leading global provider of consulting, outsourcing and investment services. Mercer works with clients to solve their most complex benefit and human capital issues, designing and helping manage health, retirement and other benefits. It is a leader in benefit outsourcing. Mercer’s investment services include investment consulting and multi-manager investment management. (http://www.mercer.com/press-releases/1420615). And where are the three Caucasus cities? Nothing about that. But we can figure from this paragraph that Metral was speaking about the three cities. As of the role of the currency fluctuation then the report speaks about that but not specifically in the region of Caucasus. “Inflation pressures continue to be the main impact on the cost of goods and services in Argentina and Venezuela, causing their cities to jump in the ranking. Overall, exchange rates in South America remain relatively stable, with the exception of local currencies in Brazil, Chile and Costa Rica which have all strengthened significantly against the US dollar, causing the region’s cities to rise in the ranking.” according to Metral. So we have such a complex story. Honestly said, we are not inclined to think that they made this mistake in purpose. We may assume that the author was confused in the beginning. However, the most reckless thing is that a number of Internet sources have supported this news without checking the authenticity of the information. We are sure that the TV channels will rush laud the governing in its efforts to lower the prices in Armenia. But none of them would ever want to do that when they found out that the information meant the opposite. This is not the “bad and incorrect” publication of Forbes for the government to use all of its propaganda.
P.S. By the way, it is not excluded that certain politicians my say the following after this article, “This is typical of journalists. They publish incorrect materials without checking its validity.” Let us mention that yesterday if we had tried calling the statesmen, who are fond of press conferences to find out what they think about Mercer’s report that life has become cheaper in Armenia, we are sure that 99% of them would not ever say that this is incorrect. They would laud the painstaking efforts of the government and the Central Bank. A quite interesting thing we would have in the result but we still didn’t do that.