‘Depression Fetishism’ All the Rage
Three out of four Americans believe financial reporters are making things worse by hyping bad economic news.
Not a day goes by without a journalist reminding us that “this is the worst economy in seventy-five years.” A quick mental calculation takes us back to the early 1930s and — bam! — it’s the Great Depression all over again. It’s a convenient historical marker. In 1933, 4,000 banks went belly up. The unemployment rate reached 25 percent. While the economy grew late in the decade, poverty, suffering, and desperation lingered across the national landscape — perhaps most memorably captured in the migrant imagery of photographer Dorothea Lange. It wasn’t until after World War II that the psychology of economic prosperity returned to pre-1929 levels.
There is no doubt that today’s economic crisis ranks among the most severe we’ve seen in decades, and no one discounts the painful dislocation millions of Americans are feeling amid housing losses and widespread job market instability. But it’s less persuasive that today’s recession equals the fundamental collapse of capitalism of the New Deal era. Indeed, recent public opinion polling suggests that Americans see business journalism as contributing to the economic downturn. As a January 1 Opinion Research Corporation survey reported:
Seventy-seven percent of Americans believe that the U.S. media is making the economic situation worse by projecting fear into people’s minds. … The majority of those surveyed feel that the financial press, by focusing on and embellishing negative news, is damaging consumer confidence and damping investment, making a difficult situation much worse.
Careful observers of news and public opinion know that the mass media is consumed by “Depression fetishism.” It’s an affliction of the political left where pundits, liberal economists and far left bloggers endlessly decry “predatory capitalism.” Economic exaggeration and doomsday scenarios proliferate far and wide, with attacks on the Bush administration’s “malign economic neglect” bolstering the case on the Democratic left for a “New, New Deal.” Recall, for example, one of the great national newsweeklies sold magazines with a mock-up of President-elect Barack Obama riding in a vintage open-air sedan, while decked out with a crumpled fedora and an elongated cigarette filter. Can a new National Industrial Recovery Act be far behind?
Depression fetishism is just the latest indication of the steady decline of the professional media ethos of accuracy, fairness, and impartiality. Today’s media is the new partisan press. In business journalism, economic fear-mongering has replaced the who, what, when, where, why, and how of objective, rigorous, in-depth reporting. Banner headlines pump up subliminal 1930’s analogies like “Customers Line Up at IndyMac to Withdraw Money”, while the story itself omits mention that in 1929, depositors lacked FDIC guarantees of a return on checking and savings deposits of up to $100,000. It’s telling that the Washington Post just lured hardline leftist blogger Greg Sargent away from Talking Points Memo, in a development that Newsbusters’ Tim Graham says is revealing of today’s reporting environment and its “revolving door between the mainstream media and the leftist barricades.”
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Donald Kent Douglas is an associate professor of Political Science teaching in Southern California.
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16 Comments
1. David Thomson:One should probably not worry too much about the leftist media focussing on bad economic news. That should change on January 20. Immediately afterwards, we will constantly see articles exclaiming how Barack Obama is saving the nation! The MSM (main street propagandists) only focus on bad economic news when a Republican resides in the White House.
Jan 6, 2009 - 1:39 am 2. Emma:David Thomson is probably right.
But meanwhile – I was just mentioning this to someone today, it’s almost like the bad economy is the latest fad. Businesses are already using it to promote products. (”Velveeta – the smart buy in a bad economy!”) People are one-upping each other with their bad-economy measures. (”Can’t get the Starbucks every morning anymore, I’m making my own cheap generic coffee!” / “I’M using Postum!” / “I’M grinding up acorns like they did in the Civil War!”) And the MSM can hardly stand to tear itself away from bad economy stories, apparently.
It’s really freaky to me. One day, nobody knows how bad things are and they’re spending normally; 24 hours later they’re reusing coffee filters and looking up recipes for Meatless Meatloaf.
Jan 6, 2009 - 3:20 am 3. Redheart:You can count on the MSM to be hyping the economic dilemma into proportions beyond reality. There will never be a time where everyone that wants/needs a job will have it, when someone won’t be losing their home to foreclosure or a family or business will not be operating in red ink. We have more of it now for a multitude of reasons. How we got here is one thing; how the Democrats and their campaign managers, the media, lead us out is quite another. Just as the media hyped the issues in the presidential election to suit a liberal agenda, they are doing so now w/ the economy. They ignore anything that might be actually good for the country as a whole if it doesn’t promote their liberal agenda. They play up every negative if they believe it will promote the liberal agenda. It’s a spinning vortex that has no end. Add into that, moderate-to-left Republicans that play along, hoping it will secure them another term in office, and we have ourselves quite a mess in terms of trying to ever get realistic information. It was a Democrat that started the first bank run in the summer and when the president-elect had secured the nomination based primarily on anti-war support, a scramble ensued when the war was seen to be ‘going well’. What else was there to put Democrats over the top and back in power? What other big-ticket issue could be pummeled at the public in order to secure victory? The economy. We’ve already seen so much back-pedaling since the days of campaign promises it’s stunning, yet the MSM stands firm in its support, even when the positions are now a complete opposite. Democrats craved a huge issue, such as bad economic news, in order to get elected. Now they have it and we’ll sit back and watch them solve it. Isn’t it the Socialists that believe the weakening and ultimate destruction of a country’s economy are key platforms of taking over?
Jan 6, 2009 - 4:51 am 4. seven:It is a bad/horrible recession or even depression for print media. It should be. They over charged and refused to discount help wanted ads and now those are better served on web job boards. They are mostly opinion and far to lazy to report from the field and dig out facts. Bad news sells papers and since they were overly dramatic in false attacks on gov. Palin, what can they do to increase drama now? The only reason Fox exploded was because the old timers got sloppy and invited it.
Jan 6, 2009 - 6:26 am 5. seven:A couple of other points. I was raised without tv. I missed tv during 10 years of work and college. All it has is sports and that is overly dripping with beer and sexuality commercials.
Jan 6, 2009 - 6:36 am 6. Cybergeezer:My company advertized on NPR. I listen to the tone of the voices in their heart breaking whining about victums in the world and get turned off. There are two announcers with latenight half news programs and they whine with the same tone. Using voice and sounds to make people feel pain from victums. Yes starvation in Uganda is terrible and so are std’s epidemics in the bible belt now. They do not have the ability to report good neqws.
It’s great to see the main stream media cowering like a mistreated dog in a cage; They are responsible for the depletion of esteem for the United States. The main stream media has propagated an intellectual war with “We The People” over it’s juvenile and irresponsible opinion, published as “news”.
Jan 6, 2009 - 7:04 am 7. Byron Dickens:(Now, if only the main stream media can publish and implant this illusion in the minds of enough sympathizers, they’d curry favor from a few servile Congressmen for a bail out.)
Read this article of facts and chronology and determine for yourself who is responsible for basic problems with our economic policy today.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZWU2MjBlMWE3MGIxZjczYTA3OWVlY2RkM2ZlNzJmNmI=&w=MQ==
The MSM has spent the last seven years trying to tell us that we are headed into another Great Depression. Nobody in Texas seems to have gotten the word, though. New construction is going up everywhere. The company I work for is expanding. You get the idea.
Jan 6, 2009 - 9:26 am 8. Ann:Our middle aged son and his wife completely changed careers and started a new “double” business two years ago: 1 side retail sales and the other side wholesaling. They have more than replaced their combined salaries (based on 15 year professional careers) and are, cheerfully, choosing not to participate in the recession.
#1…what David said!
Jan 6, 2009 - 11:39 am 9. xqqme:http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/711-There-Is-No-Unicorn-That-Craps-Skittles.html
Refusal to acknowledge mathematical facts leads to pain, and lots of it, because mathematics never – never – lies.
Jan 6, 2009 - 1:42 pm 10. zanne:Three out of four Americans believe financial reporters are making things worse by hyping bad economic news.
January 6, 2009 – by Donald Kent Douglas
Jan 6, 2009 - 7:49 pm 11. L:Some folks can’t handle the truth.
Mr. Douglas speaks of, “…the random extermination of the innocents as our most recent example of Islamic radicalism’s barbarous evil….”
When will people wake up?
Jan 6, 2009 - 8:33 pm 12. John Work:The problem is not “radical Islam”.
The problem is Islam, period.
The continued effort to hype the economic “problems” serves two purposes:
1) Cover for the probability that the economy will get worse under the supervision of the Dems. If the “problems” are hyped now, then later it can all still be blamed on the evil Bush for creating nearly insurmountable problems to be solved by Obama.
2) And to perpetuate the idea that drastic measures are required to correct “capitalistic excesses”. Further down the road, if things indeed get worse, so much the better for this will require even more drastic measures. Obama is already on record as saying that trillion dollar deficits will be required for years to come.
The Left has come to its point of great opportunity for Change. It seems a forlorn Hope that they will fail to take the fullest advantage of it. With their new powers and the perfection of their methods of media blitz and voting fraud, they may well be the ruling party for decades. Of course this assumes that external forces will not impose their rule on all of us due to the great opportunities that the Dems will provide with their defense cuts and foreign policy. Interesting times.
Jan 7, 2009 - 10:21 am 13. Mary Grabar:The situation has to look very dire to prepare the people for a dictator. Listen to Obama’s warnings today. Listen to the talk about how much it will take to clean up the mess Bush has made over the last eight years. Drastic measures are called for! It’s a common technique of tyrants.
Jan 8, 2009 - 1:15 pm 14. Cybergeezer:With the impending economic and social pain the Obamanation is trying to force through Congress, “We The People” will have to open up neighborhood Water Boarding Clinics to get some relief.
Jan 8, 2009 - 1:31 pm 15. Cybergeezer:And, oh yea! If the U.S. gets hit by another 9/11 size attack, Obambi, our Saviour, will probably impose martial law to “defend” us.
Jan 8, 2009 - 1:38 pm 16. Dan:After all, he does want the world to know that now He is Commander in Chief of the most powerful nation on earth.
The coverage of the economy mirrors the way the MSM does business these days. Everything is hyped to the max. Look at the way snowstorms and floods are magnified into life changing disasters. Last spring the midwest experienced flooding that was worse than the norm. The city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa was inundated. MSM reporters descended on the area and forecast economic ruin for farmers. As a matter of fact, the corn planting was significantly delayed, but the season of 2008 turned out to be the second best in history. Where were the MSM at harvesttime? Good question.
Jan 9, 2009 - 5:25 amThe reporting of the Iraq war is another case in point. Every military reversal was treated like a repeat of the battle of the Kasserine Pass in WWII. Our enemies were treated as clever beyond belief, invisible to US troops and next to immortal. US fire seemed to kill only innocent civilians or wounded insurgents. The evening news always seemed to show a fresh video produced by the other side of a Hummer being vaporized by an IED or Juba the mythical sniper taking out another careless American. The reality, as we now know, was that the enemy died in large numbers while Americans were the beneficiaries of the best in weapons technology. That, coupled with a change in strategy (The Surge) which every MSM pundit predicted would fail, routed our enemies. Now that the war has been won, the MSM has withdrawn from the field. They aren’t interested in reporting progress in reconstruction of Iraq’s political or economic infrastructure. It’s on to Gaza to show the murderous Israeli army massacring the innocent Palestinian children as they cower in the UN schools (being used as weapons depots by Hamas).