I start every sentence with "In this tough economic climate..."

What recession?

There's clearly nothing the average person can do about it, except, if they still have a job to keep making their car/house payments and going to work.

It may sound naive and ignorant, but what good is worrying going to do? Give me an ulcer? Make my medical bills go up?

If people stopped acting like it was the end of the world it would alleviate quite a bit of our problems. Not everything, not by a long shot. But damn if it wouldn't help.

This is the greatest tragedy of the demise of the US print media--the death of investigative journalism. Broadcast news depends on visual images, and as such ends up showing and overplaying an endless stream of B-roll of what has happened. We see hour after hour of coverage of the snowstorm that anyone could have seen by stepping outside, but minimal coverage of the day-to-day events of two overseas wars that are almost wholly out of reach for nearly all Americans. While investigative television reporting is not unheard of, it is rare, just as sensationalized as most other TV news reporting, and, more often than not, driven by a desire for ratings rather than a drive to find the story.
We need look only as far as The Daily Show's montage this week of clips from MSNBC. Putting aside Jim Cramer's poor prognostication, we have the picture of a network that did a fine job reporting what happened yesterday, but that had no interest in looking into either i. why it happened or ii. what would happen tomorrow.
The rise of small-scale, internet- and blog-based reporting will probably only make up for the loss of major newspapers in a small way. There are many blogs dedicated to getting the facts behind the CNN bottom-of-the-screen news ticker, but none have the mass appeal of a newspaper or TV channel, as they are most likely to be read by those who have a strong interest in the subject to begin with. Moreover, those blogs and sites are few and far between, drowned out in a sea of others dedicated solely to repeating the soundbites and talking points off the evening (or morning, midday, afternoon or whenever) news programs.

I can top that. My dad, born in the early 20's, grew up during the Great Depression and World War II, so his whole mindset was based on things like conserving food, rations, etc. So all MY life, I grew up hearing about how people got by during the Great Depression. Although, I admit, nowadays, I sort of wish I'd listened to my dad a big more, since a lot of what I'm going through now sounds a lot like his stories of his teens and 20s.

brahmabull@

What do you do that the economy leaves your job safe?

This is why I don't watch the national news. I watch my late local news and when they start in on the economy stories I switch to Seinfeld. Don't get me wrong, I feel for those who have lost their jobs or homes but I just don't relate to any of that. I work in and industry that is in no danger of collapse, I bought a home I could actually afford, I still make my credit card payments on time, my family still goes out to eat once a week and we're going to Disney World this summer on vacation. No I don't make 6 figures, mid 5 figures is more like it, very middle class. Yeah things are bad for alot of people, but do we have to have it shoved down our throats everywhere we turn.

Truth of matter is our economy is likely going to get worse before it gets any better, avoiding the obvious is no way to fix it. I'm perfectly content with the entertainment news reminding us of these economic hard times because I AM living through it.

Can you imagine someone who lost there job, and can't pay their mortgage and is a single parent. Turn on the news and listen to talking heads avoid the subject of our economy woes. I'd be like "Hello, reality....you there?"

This is the first time you've realized that the news' sole purpose is to try to scare the living shite out of America? They will take any topic to the nth degree....bird flu, global warming, west nile virus; at least the recession actually has a possibility of effecting many of the viewers.

News is a joke. The programming will slowly go the way of newspapers. Thank God.

I agree that it is getting silly. Everyone knows times are tough. No, don't show me expensive things, like $4,000 shoes, but give me a break, okay? Don't keep rubbing it in. Especially since the people doing the talking have way more than I do.

you write for a tv blog and you've only just picked up on that all they've been talking about for the past 6 months is the bad economy?