Telling us the truth - NOT the media's objective

The vast majority of today's media has an agenda - getting a "progressive" government elected. That isn't what we're paying them for. Instead of giving us the straight & clear news we expect, they're taking every opportunity available to panic us into following their lead and worshiping at the the liberal altar.

If you remember the late 70's, you remember the double-digit mortgage rates and all the fun we had trying earn enough to pay them while waiting in gas lines. Jimmie Carter's "progressive" policies gave us double-digit inflation, the Iran hostage crisis, and eventually Ronald Reagan.

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- The Economy Isn't Hopeless; It's The Press:
"One look at statistics — from GDP growth to the unemployment rate — and it's obvious this isn't the worst economic time in U.S. history. But it might be the worst journalistically.

The major media give us only two degrees of economic news — close to 'apocalyptic' and worse. They are so outlandishly negative that coverage of the Bear Stearns buyout was vastly worse than reporting of the 1929 stock market crash.
. . .
The difference between how the media handled a crisis in 1929 and 2008 was astounding. Network news was four times more negative about the Bear Stearns buyout than major newspapers were about the 1929 crash, which many historians link to the beginning of the Depression.
. . .
The mere mention of the term "depression" evokes images of food lines, Dust Bowl refugees and bank failures. A recent USAToday.com report showed that the majority of Americans thought a new "depression" was likely.

"Asked if the nation could slip into a depression lasting several years, 59% said it was likely, and 79% said they were worried about it," explained the story.

No wonder. Reporters like CBS's Julie Chen warned viewers about the "growing economic meltdown" in a March 17, 2008, story. ABC's Bianna Golodryga used similar language the very next morning. "Some say the economy is like a house of cards," she told "Good Morning America" viewers.

Bear Stearns' collapse, while making some investors justifiably skittish, was nowhere near the marketwide cataclysm of 1929. In the six days that ended the roar of the '20s, Wall Street lost about 30% of its value.

Cut to 2008, when the unemployment rate is one-fifth of what it was at the height of the Depression. We've yet to see even one quarter of negative GDP growth. Why then was the Bear Stearns coverage worse than news reports from the 1929 crash?

Network news shows have been delivering overly negative reports since 2003. This was standard operating procedure, just more horrific than usual. In 2006, 17 network stories drew comparisons with the Great Depression, from U.S. savings rates to climate change.
. . .
The Business & Media Institute analyzed two much-discussed weeks in America's stock market history — the crash in 1929 and the week of the Bear Stearns collapse in 2008. BMI compared stories in the 1929 Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post with daily reports on ABC, CBS and NBC in 2008.

It was easy to find good news amid the market chaos in 1929. Even in the Times, the most downbeat outlet studied from that era, positive stories still outnumbered negative ones by nearly a 3-to-1 ratio. The Times reported that "there was no denying the increased optimism with which leaders of the financial district viewed the situation."

The modern news media had no such "confidence" in the markets. ABC found a dark cloud for every silver lining, saying: "And everywhere you look, it's bad news." On network news, that statement was accurate."

We have unemployment rates near historic lows.

We're easily paying for the luxury of cleaning our environment to a level never seen by any industrialized society.

We have freedom of movement and expression that sets the standard for the Western World, and is being emulated increasingly around the world.

Most people living in the US enjoy a lifestyle that is the envy of much of the world - so much so that people literally die trying to get here and share it.

Take a moment away from your tough day digging sewers (or whatever you do) and try to look around for positive things. Lots of them can be seen if you try. Then go cancel your newspaper subscription ...

Liberal solutions are invariably big-government solutions - name a big government organization that works anywhere near as efficiently as a private charity or business.

When conservatives aren't drunk on the power to spend our money, they work to reduce the power & influence of government in our lives, reducing the size & cost of government. In the long run, this is better for our grandchildren than our current policies. Don't let today's media convince you to trade tomorrow's prosperity for their "progressive" agenda.