Since the American economy imploded in October the print media has made it their mission to undermine consumer confidence with a daily dose of negative news.

Make no mistake, there is lots of real suffering going on out there. My beef is with their incessant focus on not only what has transpired but also what may transpire, going so far as to ignore anything that may be construed as positive and substitute these stories with more doom and gloom... real or percieved.

I was under the impression that the job of the media was to report the news... not make it up. They persist in hammering the public daily with their incessant doom and gloom exacerbating the problem.

They turn concern to fear and fear to paranoia eroding an already fragile consumer confidence. In the end they become the authors of a self fulfilling prophecy.

Take the following for instance, several weeks ago Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney expressed his belief that the Canadian economy could see some positive signs by the end of 2009.

The print media chose to completely ignore his statement opting instead for more doom and gloom. A week after his original statement, Mr. Carney elaborated on his original statement. Only then did the print media acknowledge his statement.

Regarding his statement, Carney prefaced it by saying his optimism was contingent on the premise that the misc bailout packages, being put together by world governments, would have their desired effect.

The media's position (I assume they only considered it because they couldn't in good conscience continue to ignore it ) was to dismiss it as being too optimistic and return to doom and gloom.

Another case on point.

This past Tuesday was "D" Day for the Big Three auto makers as they had to submit their proposals to the US government in order to be eligible for bailout money.

There was palpable fear in the Canadian auto industry that we would get hammered but good. Some pundits even suggested that the American auto giants would even pull out of Canada all together.

Needless to say the print media ran with these fears making big headlines.

As it turned out we received the best possible news. Canada went virtually unscathed with little mention of our domestic auto industry.

And how was this good news reported...

Big bold headlines reported the carnage that was to befall the American auto industry then, in a much smaller subheading, aluded to the Canadian auto industries exclusion from details of the package to the government.

Even allowing for this little bit of hope must have been too much for them to stomach as the article soon returned to doom and gloom for the industry going forward.

So congradulations to the print media, as the latest figures indicate eroding consumer confidence. No, you are not solely responsible but you are certainly culpable.

Shame on you!