Media Frenzy Makes Recession Worse

There’s no doubt the economy is bad. The of flood sky-is-falling news stories make that abundantly clear. But the avalanche of bad news—delivered faster than ever before through myriad, ever-present media outlets—has fed upon itself, sinking all of us into a deeper state of collective panic than in previous downturns, David Carr writes in the New York Times.

The media gets a bit obsessed with the macabre details of every recession, writes Carr. The difference now is that “there have never been so many ways for the fear to leak in.” This hive-mind psychology has real effects: Just look at the many public companies that, despite still being profitable, have defensively laid people off in bouts of panic-driven “right-sizing.” (More recession stories.)