Over the holidays the only way I could feed my daily need for news was to watch either BBC or CNN. This diet of television news produced for a world audience left me with two lingering impressions.
The first is that these iconic news services are depicting the economies of North America and Europe to be under far greater stress than our media portrays. It was not a case of the media dramatising the negative, rather a grim daily roll of rescue packaging to prevent fundamentally sound businesses being sucked under through the troubles of others.
Commentators, whether European or American based, were of one mind. The world economy will not start to turn itself around until the American economy gets traction, and what has been done to date represents only the first tentative and superficial initiatives that will ultimately be taken.
It seemed every new authoritative report or study published made the point that previous predictions around the extent of the situation, or the time required for a turn around, were too optimistic. The after shock would appear to have the potential for more bite than the initial onslaught.
On the positive was the single minded determination and focus of world leaders to do whatever is necessary to kick start the world’s economies.
My out-take was that while we need to be cautious about talking ourselves into making things worse than they really are, conversely we need to be just as cautious about hyping the positives to the point where we don’t see an advancing tsunami. On balance, I’m now more cautious about the coming 12 months than I was previously.
On a lighter note, the other big impression was the extent to which international news presenters have ‘loosened’ up in their delivery. Rather than staid talking heads, presenters were using their hands, voicing opinions, being animated and coming out from behind their barriers.
It was more akin to someone being in the room with you chatting about world affairs. No doubt, a sign of things to come here, in time!
