Role of media in credit crunch

The number of conversations over the summer which have turned to the global credit crunch and very quickly followed by "the press/BBC/etc have made it worse by their constant coverage of bad news stories." You cannot really say "but hang on, that is their job and there have been some rather major stories to report - sub-prime, collapse of CDOs, BNP Paribas closing number of funds due to failure to value, massive losses by UBS, Merrill Lynch etc, collapse of Bear Stearns, collapse (as good as) of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac etc, etc.

One could almost say the role of the media over the global credit crunch has become an urban myth. It is interesting to see that so many people perceive the media to be all powerful in terms of formulating society's view over event(s) while media itself is in fact feeling rather weak as advertising and readership declines and TV audiences fragment. Or has the media discovered that it can still be hugely influential and if so why over financial stories not some other issue like poverty, the environment etc.

As a postscript, if you had difficulty understanding postmodernism as a concept, then people's perception of the role of the media over the global credit crunch is a classic example. An aspect of postmodernism is that "truth" and "reality" is socially constructed. By believing that the press have made the global credit crunch worse by its reporting, we are acknowledging that the "reality" of these events is heavily influenced by the media's coverage of the event. Even though the media might well argue they were reporting the reality of events on the ground, and leading figures such as the UK Chancellor agree with them.