Culpability

As Jim has been working on renovating our laundry room, I have been his gopher so have been standing by to help and we have been listening to the radio for hours on end. Of course one of the major topics is the economy. The questions have arisen, what has happened, how did it happen, why did it happen, who is to blame, etc.


I am sure there are many good answers to these questions and they range from we all contributed to it, to naming names of people that actually made crucial and critical bad decisions. Bankers, Wall Street, investors, corporate executives and politicians can all have a piece of it. We can also hand a piece of the blame to the hundred of thousands of people that took out immense loans that they knew, in their heart of hearts they could not afford. The mindless and irresponsible spending, spending, spending with credit cards took its toll as well.


To me one of the most culpable of all is the media. The big pot stirrer that never shuts up. It never stops with the doomsday speculation and never stops being an "expert" in every arena. I don't know about you but I am sick to death of it and we don't even watch TV. The problem caused by this media pot stirring is that money isn't circulating, production is down, unemployment is up and on and on. The media can take a big bow for the blame in so many ways.

The place where they lie in wait to make your day!

I would love to see the media try to shift from a position of making it worse to reporting the facts without all the negative editorializing. Getting back to true journalism sounds like a good idea. Or maybe they could take the bully pulpit they have and use it to educate and uplift and unite the country and the world...but that would be asking a bit much, I'm guessing.

Where can we turn for good news reporting? It is getting to the point that unless you see it happen with your own two eyes, you can barely believe anything from the media anymore. How do we filter it and make it something useful or worthwhile? Any ideas?