Jane Page's Blog

In an article for The New York Times, "Forget Logic; Fear Appears to Have the Edge" by Vikas Bajaj interviewed several behaviorists and financial analysts to pin point the reason we fear the loss of money over the joy of earning, winning or gaining.  This prompted me to think about how the World really got here.  Bajaj's lead into the story was: "The technical term for it is "negative feedback loop." The rest of us just call it a panic."  If the panic is so great and people are killing themselves to escape the debt, why do we listen?  Why don't we turn off the negative feedback loop?

Bajaj's article went on to interview financial mangers and one, William Ackman, a prominent hedge fund manager in New York, said: "What's happening is people are crawling into a bunker and pulling an iron sheet over their heads because they think the sky is falling."  Unfortunately that is not what is happening, people are so consumed by the panic that they can speak nor emote of anything else.  Again, I asked why we have this fear and panic spreading over the Globe.  Why don't we turn it off?  And then it came to me, we need a "Global Off Day". Every human being in the World needs to send a clear message to ALL forms of media: "We don't want the spread of panic that you thrive on!"

World Markets are failing, Nations are going bankrupt and people want to first blame the real estate industry, then the banking industry, then the President- but who is really to blame?  We are, for buying into Media Hype.  And not just the news, but advertising as well, we bought into the need to buy ads and now we are buying into the fear of loosing it all and that has the World on edge.  Yet, in all of the blame game the media has not accused themselves.  Media outlets and marketing companies have not been called in front of the Department of Justice, Free speech comes with great responsibility and the World Media has failed to be respectful stewards of that freedom.  They, like everyone else need to take some responsibility for the Global panic.  And the power of the marketing companies with subliminal tools is another debate, altogether.

After 9/11, Psychiatrists were successful in their push to take the images off of the screen and in coverage of Iraq, Americans are not shown disturbing images- well if disturbing images are too much for the viewers, why then is the negative reporting and fear based journalism that is feeding the financial panic allowed to stay on the screen and front-page.

"Global Off Day", maybe a silly idea, but if it saves a life, stops reactionary selling or affords a family quality time together, lets take a day off from the media.  No "Live at Five", No News Hours, No front page panic story, No radio, No Internet home pages- a boycott against the media and their negative reporting.  Let's force them to publish good news stories on the front page, talk to happy people on the TV & Radio.  The World needs a time-out from the negative hype- we need to turn off the negative feedback loop.