The problem with economics reporting

Steven Warshawsky writes on the American Thinker blog that there are serious problems with economics reporting in the United States because of its current negative slant.

Warshawsky wrote, “The people who write about economics plainly lack the ability to place economic ups and downs into a larger, more complete picture, or even to maintain logically consistent positions regarding the state of the American economy.  Reporting about the stock market is the perfect example.  It also happens to be the most frequent example, as keeping track of the day-to-day movements in the Dow Jones Industrial Average has become a national obsession (in my opinion, an unhealthy one).

“Case in point:  Yesterday the Dow Jones average went down (or in the words of Fox News, ‘sank’) by 387.18 points, apparently due to concerns about the ‘subprime’ mortgage market.  (For an explanation why these concerns are exaggerated, see here.)  This left the Dow Jones average at 13,270.68. Fox News described the situation thusly:Â

“‘Evidence the U.S. mortgage market crisis was having a global impact and spreading to other markets hammered financial stocks.’Â

“So the Dow Jones average ‘sank’; the U.S. mortgage market is in ‘crisis’; and financial stocks were ‘hammered.’  The entire tone of the article was doom and gloom.  I’m confident that tomorrow’s newspapers will offer the same interpretation.”

Read more here.