Journalistic Terrorism

Looking at the media here in the UK, it seems that some of our journalists have a death wish. Continually finding new angles on economic downturn, reporting new surveys and anecdotal evidence that suggests the world as we know it is coming to an end.

An example is a full page article in today’s Sunday Times in London that has many quotes on how bad it is and how bad it is going to get. Sure the evidence of drop in demand in some sectors is there but not everywhere. Surely in an article like this it would be right to ask what they think could be done to make it better or recommendations for government and business to work together to reverse the trend, but absolutely nothing, it was all negative. When I worked as a journalist we were told about balance you could not give just one side of the story, you had to ask an independent authoritative person  not just take one company’s view on things, Yet this article asked just two companies, one closed and the other laid off staff but both were linked to construction sector. Even the quotes from the CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development was all negative, surely they could have some recommendations for the government, may be they may it was edited out or maybe they were not asked?

The concern is that this style is akin to journalistic terrorism, destroying business by words not explosives, undermining confidence  so that indeed the slow down becomes a self fulfilling prophesy and gloom covers all and the media can then remind us that they told us so. A lot is at risk for the entrepreneurial community.

I wondered whether other countries displayed this same death wish. Certainly a quick glance at the business headlines of CNN & BBC, CNN had more balance and offered hope and answers where as BBC was negative.

Come on, lets be positive, there is a way out. seek out success, look at how companies are diversifying, coming up with news ideas, developing new markets, using technology to cut costs, meeting the demand for products that have potential in current times, making peoples lives more satisfying then perhaps we will have confidence again and that will become a self fulfilling prophesy.