Health Equivalency

One seldom sees anything useful in the San Francisco Chronicle, but seldom doesn't mean never. Here is an insight in an otherwise ho-hum article by Debra Saunders about the economy that I think is worth your time:

A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll conducted last month found that 78 percent of Americans think that the country is heading in the wrong direction.

Of course, almost 4 in 5 Americans think the country is heading to heck in a handbasket. The news media are stuck in one gear when it comes to reporting economic news - Armageddon.

But it's more than liberal bias. Journalists are convinced that the American economy is collapsing and going down the tube, because our industry is collapsing and going down the tube.

Saunders has a very good insight. Newspapers everywhere are laying off reporters, cutting pages, and suffering from shrinking ad revenues. Reporters (even TV reporters) identify with the newspaper business, so when their industry is hurting, the country must be hurting. Journalists need to notice that the ill health of the media does not mean the rest of the economy is deathly sick; it is still growing, albeit more slowly than we'd like.