Working from home on Fridays, I go to the kitchen at midnight to have a cold drink + snack. The small TV was left behind, and I was fascinated by the part that was playing – and a little more terrified:
Special Report: Inflation! Recession! Trimming! Market crash!
I don’t watch a lot of broadcast TV news – Bloomberg Surveillance in the AM, 60 Minutes, and CBS Sunday Morning – that’s pretty much it. It really shocked me. It was a straight-up scarecrow. The story unfolds without sort of framing or context:
Pruning: Was discussed, but there was no mention of the recruitment boom of the last five years; That there are two job opportunities for each job seeker, or how low the unemployment rate is.
Inflation: Compared to the 1970s, with lots of anecdotal examples. The Fed is behind the curve, with inflation out of control. And yet there has been no discussion of how the semiconductor shortage or the supply chain tangle or the shortage of single-family homes over the past decade have been created.
MarketThe equity market slump was at the front and center, with most tech stocks falling 60, 70, or even 80%. I haven’t heard of the 18% drop in SPX mentioned, nor the fact that we still have 67% above the 2020 epidemic low and 17% above the pre-epidemic level.
Here’s the thing: It wasn’t a political hit on Fox News – it was MSNBC.
Those who criticize the media but focus on left-to-right bias are missing the big picture. Only TV and the media should be concerned about where its biggest biases are: no Left vs. rightRather, Excitement vs. coldnessOr maybe Hysteria vs. rationality.
Most of what I see while surfing the channel is attention-grabbing nonsense. The vast majority of the 24/7 news cycle is filled with a lot of nonsense, excessive ambiguity and plenty of floating fillers.
As mentioned earlier this week, if this thing bothers you, change your media diet. To avoid Garbage Garbage.
Before:
Don’t read this blog post (May 18, 2022)
More signals, less noise (October 25, 2013)
