Media Influence on Recession

To my surprise, my previous article about the media's influence on the recession has gotten a fair amount of search traffic. My site is supposed to be about buying penny stocks, but recently I have been writing more about media events and their relation to the economy. Anyway, I thought I'd expand on my previous writing.

While searching Google for "media influence recession" I found this post on a football-related forum. Here are some snippets from the guy's post:

"I was in Cleveland this past weekend with my daughter at one of her volleyball events.

"In the lobby of the hotel there were parents from all over the mid-west having some drinks in the lobby. One guy from Ohio said that all the recession talk [is] hurting his business (he is in the RV business) all the talk on the news about things slowing down kills his business.

"Then when I got home and talked to a few people today they said the same thing. When they hear all the doom and gloom on TV..they tighten up the purse a bit."

The important part of this guy's testimony is the end, when several different people tell him that the media's reporting on things is the initiator of their "purse-tightening". Obviously, the reality of their day-today lives (their jobs, their local economy) had not given them cues to spend less. The sufficient cues came only through the media's near-constant barrage of scare stories narrowly focusing on and multiplying the U.S. collective consciousness of the recession and its over-arching importance.

Also, notice how the RV salesman from Ohio pins the blame on "all the recession talk". I think he is correct.

Everyday, I turn on the cable news and I reflect on the influence of the media not only on the recession, but on Congress and its lawmaking, what the President can and can't do, and even the media's influence on the electing of the President. In fact, can you even imagine a President Obama decoupled from this recession? The two things rose together. Before that, there was only Obama the Guy Who Had Taken an Anti-war Position Fairly Early On and Was Beating Hillary Clinton Based On This. And just to indulge this subtracting things from Obama a little more, what is he minus the recession and minus the anti-war and Primary wins? A smooth black guy, well-educated, speaks powerfully if generally, looks healthy, seems friendly. God, I have gone off again!

In conclusion, the media influence on the recession is the unreported culprit, and even the President himself can't call them out because they have the real power and humans love to watch public stonings.