Roughly two years ago, the Progress began reporting activity in the county development office was slowing. Drastically fewer building permits and development plans had been submitted.
Our newspaper ran stories talking to realtors who acknowledged that “Yes, the market was slowing.”
The Progress printed stories indicating unemployment and foreclosures were both on the rise. Our stories pointed out that this was part of a national trend
Other newspapers, cable news networks and magazines have made similar reports. Obviously these bigger-scope publications are reporting on the national impact of crises at Lehman Brothers, AIG, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, while weeklies, like the Progress, have covered their own areas and tried to discern how locals fit into the national patterns.
Initially, both nationwide and locally, such news coverage met with skepticism and some derision: “If they’d quit reporting it was bad, it wouldn’t be that bad.”
Locally, we heard that if the media (as in us) would just quit reporting the housing market was slowing, then it wouldn’t be. In one case, a person at a public meeting said Pickens County’s real estate market was just fine and our reporting was wrong.
Some folks argue that by reporting statistics for past quarters or the past month’s activities in the development office, we somehow made the slow-down happen.
No one complained when we reported Pickens was among the fastest growing counties and that the housing market was booming. But some critics believe when the reverse became true (based on the same statistics and sources), we should have overlooked “those numbers.”
In none of these cases were we analyzing, speculating or projecting conclusions. Our reporters talked with knowledgeable local sources, and when those sources had a positive message, that was reported.
But the argument is made that by reporting legitimate bad news involving the economy, the media can rattle consumer confidence and perpetuate the problem.
We ask you to picture the alternative. Imagine all media, from the Progress to the Wall Street Journal, simply deciding not to report negative economic news?
In that scenario, the big players would still know things were heading south and would be able to react accordingly. But little guys in places like Jasper would be blind-sided, facing drops in stock prices, lower real estate values, new difficulty in obtaining a mortgage or commercial credit––with no warning whatsoever.
The risk of somehow panicking the public or perpetuating a bad-news economic stagnation is trumped every time by the media duty to give timely and accurate information. Whether it was welcome news or not, our readers needed to know things were slowing locally in our major industry, real estate.
Nationally, there were fundamental problems with the entire housing market, the banking system and the investment industry. Reporting on this probably had some short-term impact on the stock market as nervous investors got out. Knowing things were slowing probably slackened consumer confidence as well. In turn, that probably led some people to save rather than spend, nesting cash for rainy days to come, and, in fact, hampering sales of everything from cheese straws to houses.
But reporting the facts did not create the economic havoc and turmoil now evident in this country. In truth, if more attention had been paid to earlier reports, some of this trouble might have been avoided.
Too often critics imply that the media (including this paper) enjoys bad news. We don’t. With the housing market downturn, this newspaper feels the effects as local real estate advertising falls off.
But we aren’t going to hold the news just because it upsets some people. Fact is, our readers stood to benefit from the warning we gave that our economy was slowing. To skip that warning would have been a gross dereliction on our part. It is our duty to inform you of things talked about in public meetings (in this case, talk backed clearly by tallies of housing permits issued).
Did we cause the housing market to slow? Hardly. Numerous factors shaped events. We simply told the story. |
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