Aggravating the Recession by reporting on it

Do you think the recession and the housing slump have become even worse because the media has talked about them? The president of the North Peninsula Building Association made this complaint at the Monday Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

The PDN’s headline on Monday was about the housing crisis and recent layoffs at local mills, and Kevin Russell showed the group a copy of the PDN, saying “Why do we let the media drive our lives?”

This has been a long-running complaint, that when the media reports on a recession, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Some downtown Port Angeles merchants are making a similar complaint: the PDN is driving away customers with their constant reporting on downtown construction projects and traffic jams.

It’s sort of an awkward situation; the media can't exactly stay hush-hush about economic news. And yet it does seem like the more news there is about the recession, the less people spend, and the cycle reinforces itself.