Irresponsible media

Every day for the past few weeks most of the world has been glued to their news sources (be it internet,tv, radio, or whatever) for some news regarding our economy and our future.

(Now, as a caveat, I must note that I'm personally not extremely worried about the economy, as I believe strongly that in a market system this sort of thing happens from time-to-time as a sort of Darwinian mechanism to separate the good from the bad, a la Malthus....)

I find it interesting, however, that over the past weeks the media has been publishing every twitch of the world markets. A dozen reports a day on the current state of the exchanges has only served to heighten the feeling of panic and uncertainty that is characterizing the markets.

Now yesterday, there was a substantial and rather heartening report from Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney. He predicts that Canada is going to see a quarter of very mild decrease, followed by a quarter of zero growth, and 2009 is to be a year of modest growth.

Far from doom and gloom, I feel. His predictions don't even characterize Canada as in a recession (defined by two consecutive down quarters).

I find no mention of this report in any of my usual news sources online this morning. I can't speak to print, because I don't read it, but I find this extremely odd.

Note to journalists: our market is based on consumer confidence. The sooner people start spending their money again the sooner Canada will bounce out of this very shallow trough. If you don't publish only fact, at least editorialize from both sides of the issue.