Reader question:

What does this sentence – The answer is a qualified “yes” – mean?

My comments:

It means they agree and yet they’re not in total agreement.

A qualified answer is an answer with strings attached. In other words, it is limited. It has restrictions. It isn’t unconditional.

Let me think of an example.

Ok, just as a qualified person has many attributes that makes him or her suitable for a job, a qualified answer is one with conditions too. For example, a qualified accountant must be able to read the books – and perhaps cook the books if and when the corporation asks them to – a qualified answer is also attached to special circumstances. If you ask, for example, if I throw an iron ball out of the window will it fall to the ground, the answer is yes.

It is, in this case, an unconditional yes as no iron balls have ever been known to be able to defy gravity. In this general situation, the iron ball will, like Newton’s apple, fall to the ground. However, if the question is: If I throw an iron ball on a string out of the window, will it hit the floor? Then the answer has to be a qualified “yes”, i.e. under certain circumstances, the answer is “yes” – it will happen.

Or a qualified “no”, i.e. under some other circumstances the answer is “no” – it won’t happen.

If, for example, the string is long enough, the ball will hit the floor. If not, the ball will be pulled back, like a yo-yo.

Come to think of it, if you go bungee jumping, you may ask the operator, Will I hit the floor?

A silly question to be sure. I’m certain no-one asks this question out loud but it must be in the back of your mind sometimes. And so, just for the sake of argument if you do ask, Will I hit the floor if you let me go?

The operator, I’m sure, will give you an emphatic “No” for reply. However, the correct answer must be a qualified “No”. That is, under normal circumstances, you’ll be safe. However, you will hit the floor if the bungee rope snaps!

A terrible example, I know. Sorry about that.

You get the idea, though, I hope.

To sum up, a qualified “yes” is a qualified answer, as is a qualified “no”.

The difference between the two, by the way, is that a qualified “yes” is much in favor of a positive answer, i.e. in most cases the answer is yes. A qualified “no”, on the other hand, means usually no, but only occasionally (under special conditions) yes.

Alright, media examples of both qualified “yes” and “no”:

1. Could it work? That’s the question being asked about President Barack Obama's big new jobs plan.

Independent experts answered Friday with a qualified yes.

The American Jobs Act would create jobs and help keep a struggling economy moving forward, said a number of economists. But they cautioned that it wouldn't shift the nation's business gears into overdrive, and it offers only modest benefits, given the headwinds the economy faces from a moribund housing sector and growing financial turmoil in Europe.

As only a short-term stimulus plan, the American Jobs Act wouldn't address structural and external problems holding back the U.S. economy. And since the proposals' very design is transitory, it makes them difficult to compare against the broad economic plans being proposed by GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, who hope to replace Obama.

Macroeconomic Advisers, a leading economic forecast group, projected that Obama’s plan “would give a significant boost to (the gross domestic product) and employment over the near-term.”

There’s the rub. Obama’s plan aims to deliver only a short-term fix to keep the economy moving forward and avoid falling back into recession.

- Economists say Obama plan would create jobs, but... McClatchyDC.com, September 9, 2011.

2. While Environment Canada does not keep records about humidex advisories, certainly June 2005 was full of them. It issues the advisories when the temperature is above 30 and the humidity makes if feel like it's above 40.

Kimbell warns June’s hot weather may extend throughout the rest of the summer.

“We are forecasting the temperature to be above average for June, July and August. But you have to take that with a grain of salt because of our record. Three-month forecasts are very difficult to do,” he said.

But if the summer of 2005 does in fact turn out to be one of the hottest on record, does that prove that we’re truly in the throes of climate change? The short answer is no, but it’s a qualified no.

“Climate change is something that is long-term and happens over decades,” said Kimbell. In other words, one hot summer does not equal climate change.

Still, climatologists say we are in a sustained, relatively rapid period of global warming, which could have significant effects on animal, plant and human life. The 1990s contained some of the warmest years since 1861, when scientists began keeping records. The year 2004 was the fourth-warmest on record.

- Heat waves, CBC News Online, June 30, 2005.

3. An informal media survey suggests that the media’s know-how of basic economics can be hit-and-miss, and industry insiders disagree over its relevance and consequence.

Few news events are as compelling as social unrest. Coverage of the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle late last year was thick among newspapers, television, radio and online news outlets, replete with demonstrators, riot-control officers, world leaders and an apologetic mayor.

But the problem, according to some, was a glaring error of commission. Rather than investigate the root issue of the protests—the pros and cons of international free trade—the media focused its attention largely on the unrest taking place outside the negotiations. One obvious reason for doing so was the spectacle’s drama and entertainment.

But a larger question is the degree to which the general media can handle the more mundane, but arguably more important, stories that involve basic economics. While many consider basic economics to be relevant only for the business page, the fundamental nature of economics is about the framing of choices concerning public and private goods and services. As such, it would seem that economics has relevance to many stories in a given news day.

But whether the media is equipped to handle those stories is another question. In the case of the WTO protests, for example, “few publications could describe what was really at stake” with the negotiations, said Peter Hillan, former executive business editor of the San Jose Mercury News.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis has been involved with the issue of economic literacy for the better part of two decades, most often at the K-12 level. Given the reach, impact and educational nature of the news media, the Minneapolis Fed queried more than 150 journalists, former journalists and journalism school faculty via e-mail and phone for their personal opinions regarding the economics know-how of news organizations. About 40 responded to the informal, open-ended survey. While no iron-clad conclusions can be made, a number of interesting themes emerged.

Asked whether most reporters had a grasp of basic economics, most respondents gave a qualified “no”: Know-how of economics was generally good at elite news organizations and among the business and financial press. Below that upper crust, most believed that economic literacy waned—sometimes badly—as you moved down the media ladder in terms of market size, and was generally suspect throughout broadcast news. Despite such criticism, there was no clear answer regarding what, if anything, should be done. In fact, a fair handful of respondents believed that poor understanding of economics in the media—even if present—was not a terribly significant problem.

- Understanding the Cost of Free Lunch, MinneapolisFed.org, December 1, 2000.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

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