Manic Depressive Mainstream Media

Rich Karlgaard, the editor of Forbes Magazine, made a spectacular point in his January column (yes, I am a touch behind in my magazine reading). Basically, he opines that the mainstream media wallow in a zero-sum world. There can be only one top anchor at each station and one top editor at each newspaper. Consequently, alarming stories about job losses, trade and fiscal deficits, global warming, price of oil, and so on. He asks why headlines are filled with November's news of GM cutting 30,000 jobs but do not offer equal treatment of the fact that that very same number of jobs are created every SIX days.