Economic doomsayers... TAKE A HIKE!
Doom merchants! Do they do your head in or what? Or has the credit-crunch brigade got it right this time?
What am I on about? Well, in summary, are we on the precipice of economic disaster or not? If you listen to some - largely London-based - commentators, we're already falling over it.
Indeed, according to some of them, the economic world has already seen certain businesses disintegrate at the bottom of a cartoon-like drop.
PUFF!
Extrapolate their worst trends and many household names will also be out of business in 18 months, unless they halve their costs.
ARRGGHHH!! Close branch offices! Slash the product range! Cancel the research! Cut the training! Freeze recruitment! Negotiate pay cuts! Re-write contracts to a fraction of their worth! We're all doomed if we don't.
Well, call me cynical, but I'm tiring of this Fleet Street-style hyperbole. Especially when it's picked up by semi-local 'experts' who choose to spread the PANIC.
I reckon one of the main factors in the current fast-lane downturn is the constant, the perverse, the almost gleeful talking up of the re-run of the 1930s depression we're supposedly in.
So, as editor of the biggest daily newspaper in Birmingham, I've come to a very important decision tonight. Whatever the news from London, from share-price watchers and bonus-dependent private school fee payers, the Birmingham Mail is going to headline GOOD economic news on tomorrow's front page.
Nothing false or untruthful. Certainly nothing single-sourced or rumoured. Just a piece of news that I know we have and that MIGHT have been reserved for an inside page or even the business spread until now.
But tomorrow, in an effort to LIFT our regional economic spirits, we're going to HOLD THE FRONT PAGE for a POSITIVE local business SUCCESS story. Something that might make hundreds of local employees finally BOOK their hols rather than cancel them.
So put the flags out tomorrow. Announce a £1 rise in the kids' pocket-money. Or at least take the missus out for a prawn cocktail treat. Because tomorrow, do we have GOOD news for you? You bet we have.
AND WE'RE GOING TO SHOUT ABOUT IT!!
Watch this space.
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Steve Dyson - Blog from the Editor on recent issues and events.
Well said. Its about time that someone in the media woke up to the damage that can be done by constant drip feeding of bad news...
I was at a conference last week where Dennis Turner, Chief Economist of HSBC, made a similar point: that there are three legs to the economy, that one of them was public opinion, and that the Press was in danger of talking us into a recession.
But can The Mail go further? Will you agree to give equal prominence to good and bad news? If the stock market drops 100 points then fell free to comment on the billions wiped off shares. But if it goes back up again make sure you comment on the billions put onto shares!
You're right. Time to be cheerful. Yes, balanced. Yes, accurate. But we MUST note the positive as well as the begative before we talk ourselves into recession.