I used to manage sales organizations. When I found a salesperson telling another how terrible things were or how the market is dead, etc. (as salespeople often do), my response would generally be: "Our living depends on our attitude. You're taking money out of their pocket without even being able to spend it. That makes you a thief."
This morning's PI is a thief. Don't all of our livelihoods and lives depend to some extent upon our attitudes? Mine does. The crime? This morning (Saturday, Feb 21, 2009) the headline reads "Hope latest victim of economy". Ohmigod, does this mean that there is no more hope at all!?!?! Somehow they got a hold of a way to quantify hope and, oh no...the economy killed it! Okay... taken in one potential context the words retain plausibile deniability (in CIA parlance) and one could say that generally hope has been diminished by recent economic news.
In fact the article was about the stock market experiencing losses despite the recovery plan. When you first saw the words "Hope latest victim of economy" did it seem perhaps more dire than that? Like we might as well throw in the towel? Did your attitude perhaps get some measure of less positive?
Fear mongering is not acceptable in the interest of selling newspapers. It is the new yellow journalism and the media needs to take more responsibility for the bites of news to which they are subjecting people. It is as if they either do not know their power, or they do not care, or both. I am not sure which would be worse.
In any event, peoples' perception of how things are is an important component of the health of an economy. This puts the media in a position of great responsibility now and it is time they owned up to it and thought twice or three times before exaggerating their reporting of economic problems. Especially for those who only scan the headlines!
Certainly a free press is a necessity, but with great freedom comes great responsibility and it is being shirked.
Ignore them? Boycott them? Lean out your window and say, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore"? Write them? I'm leaning toward d. all of the above.
All the best,
D
Date: 2009-02-21 14:35:53