It doesn’t matter if the market goes up or down, the mainstream media is never satisfied.
Earlier this year, all three broadcast networks expressed concern that higher commodity prices – which were sometimes blamed on inflation via a weak dollar – were causing suffering all around the world in the form of food shortages. But as the dollar regained strength against other currencies and demand fell, commodity prices steeply declined. As the Oct. 3 Minneapolis Star Tribune said, the commodities bubble has burst.
This time, instead of observing how this might help average Americans financially – and make food more available to hungry people the media found a new victim. Oct. 14 “NBC Nightly News” showed how falling prices have hurt farmers who became dependent on the higher prices.
“Our prices have gone down by 50 percent in the last 30 days for all of our grain products and our input costs have not come down,” a farmer from
NBC correspondent Mara Schiavocampo didn’t blame the laws of supply and demand for farmers’ hardships. Instead, she blamed the slowed economy.
“This economy is one of the worst these folks have seen, something they talk about all around town at places like this farmer’s co-op,” Schiavocampo said.
Schiavocampo asked one patron of the farmer’s co-op if he had ever seen anything “like this” before. His reply was about farming specifically, but in a broader sense: “Not with the national economy, no.”
Either way, farmers have a knack for handling things through the good times and the bad times, but the bad times are what make the news.
“Farmers are used to tough times, after all, Mother Nature can be just as punishing as the stock market,” Schiavocampo added. “So they’re handling this crisis the same way they handle the earth – with patience and hope.”
