At the
CGTA show in August, I spoke to a couple of retailers from Oshawa, Ontario, who said that traffic in their store reflected whatever news was running on the front page of their local paper. Oshawa is home to a
General Motor's (GM) plant that is facing the prospect of being shut down. If news about the plant's chances for survival was bad, traffic to their store was down. If the news were more promising (successful union negotiations, etc.), traffic was up. This story and consumer reaction to the fall's economic news has me wondering two things: Where is the line between responsible reporting and fear mongering? And, are people media savvy or media soaked?
One evening last week, I arrived at my mother's home after she had watched
CTV News' consumer affairs reporter,
Pat Foran, offer advice on buying gift cards. What she took away from the report was that stores were going bankrupt and we shouldn't buy gift cards.
I watched the piece myself on the CTV web site (click on "Pat Foran on Useless Gift Cards.) In fact, it is a fairly balanced assessment of the situation. Foran pointed out that big retailers like Linens N' Things and Circuit City had gone bankrupt and that the future of Circuit City's Canadian stores (The Source) was undecided. An expert explained that if a store goes bankrupt, gift card holders will join a long list of creditors. And, a woman related buying a $1,000 gift certificate for lessons at a dance studio that went bankrupt before her daughter had even taken her third lesson. Foran reported that business bankruptcies were up 9 percent. What he didn't mention was what percentage of those businesses were retailers. The piece also didn't point out that there are thousands of stores that will not go bankrupt.
So, where's the line? Does the media have a responsibility to report the good news along with the bad? What would be the psychological effect if the headline on the front page of the newspaper on your doorstep tomorrow morning read something like "87 Percent of Canadian Businesses Report Profitable Year; 13 Percent Seeing Red Ink"? Is reporting good news misleading? Is good news less valid than bad news? Or, is it just that good news doesn't sell newspapers or draw viewers to a website or newscast? Or, is there no good news?
It's a fact that people only absorb a portion of what they see and hear in the media. They also don't read between the lines of much of what is being reported. When the positive news isn't in the headline or the first paragraph, a lot of people miss it. And there's a lot of media out there repeating the same "doom and gloom" message, which is certainly true but not the only thing that's true. That's why I believe that most people are media soaked not media savvy. I also believe that people have to know what's going on and the media does have a responsibility to report what's happening on the economic front. There's no percentage in hiding from reality. I'd just like to see the media leaven its reporting with some equally true good news.
