8-8 FB Media Frenzy

No news could be bad news, or at least interpreted that way. We are skittish, I’m skittish, maybe you are too.The USDA’s  National Agricultural Statistics Service sent out their press release the other day and the headline said Western farm production expenditures down 1.4%. Okay, so with all of the economic news that we have been hearing, I immediately go Oh Oh… the last bastion of a good healthy economy, meaning agriculture, even that is going down. It’s a mentality, it’s a predefined disposition. More bad news. Just look at the latest headline from agricultural statisticians. So with sweaty palms, I call up NASS spokesperson Vince Matthews. Here he is: “Down 1.4% is really not down much at all, is staying pretty much the same as it has been. You can’t read a lot into that size of a decrease. To use your language that could be just a statistical fluctuation, it doesn’t have a lot of meaning. Right. There is not enough of a difference to have any meaning at all.”

So as a member of the media, I have to say that the media can be a problem. It’s like calling fire in a movie theater. Give us the facts, just the facts.