Perusing the FT, I came across this. Here be the pertinent excerpt:

Donna, an HBOS employee writing on an internet message board, accused alarmist journalists as well as traders of driving down bank stocks: “I will probably be out of a job now. Thank you, media and speculators, for ruining my life! How am I going to pay my mortgage?”

Just how much control do journos have nowadays? They control the celebrities, they make and break events - if you have the journos on your side, then it's all gravy. If not, then you're up the proverbial waterway without the proverbial control system. So is it any wonder that when news of a collapsing housing market starting to stagnate reaches the newspapers that pretty much a year later the world markets are in turmoil?

It goes like this. Journo sees what happens. Gleefully predicts doom and gloom. Papers get read. People think "Ah bollocks." They read the housing markets are collapsing, so they get wary. They don't gleefully bound in without a care in the world. I mean, why sell a house if the price is a lot less than what it has been or could be? Why buy a house if prices could get a lot lower, like the papers are saying? Ergo, market stagnates. It might have done anyway, it probably would have. Journo's pick up on it with articles such as this. Seems to be no appreciation that the media-effect could have had some say in the faster then expected decline.

So, are alarmist journos being irresponsible in the way they report on events like this? Do they exactly know how much hinges on their words? Obviously, stories such as "Ending In Sight", "Economy showing signs of railing" are irresponsible, but are they any more irresponsible than Doomsday predictions? I'm of the belief that if the media found something else to bitch about for a while, or y'know, just stopped focussing on it, then the situation would at least stop getting worse and maybe improve. No news is good news, right?

But this is dangerous territory now. You could conclude from this that Government controlled media would fix a lot of problems. Maybe it might, but it would be the dawn of an Orwellian era, the start of a Distopia. Surely though, a modicum of common sense needs applying to alarmist propaganda? With the wide-range of media nowadays, everyone is a jack-of-all-trades. Everyone knows a little of everything, which is a dangerous thing.

edit: it is worth noting, that media speculation of the impending American government intervention has at least short-term, plugged the drains. Here.