A Fear Driven Society

Was Roosevelt right when he said “all we have to fear is fear itself?” You know, he just might have been. We have been conditioned to be afraid of almost anything. While there are many factors that contribute to this, the news media plays an important role in the process.

I graduated from college with a degree in broadcast/print journalism. After internships, speaking with members of the print and broadcast media, and looking for trends in the media, you notice a pattern. Fear sells. Fear gets people’s attention. Fear increases ratings!

The lead stories on the nightly news usually play on fear - crime, flu, bad weather, fire, war - and the negative aspects of our society. What about all of the good things that go on in our world - charitable donations, volunteer work, being a responsible citizen? Those stories just don’t sell as well and are mostly ignored.

Want some real world examples? There are plenty to choose from: “bird flu” never quite becoming the global catastrophe it was made out to be, SARS never made a comeback, and what about those “killer bees” taking over the entire United States?

My personal favorite is definitely the Summer of the Shark from 2001. It was wall-to-wall news coverage of shark attacks (even making the cover of Time magazine) yet there were actually fewer shark attacks in 2001 than in 2000. I saw one graph stating Miami was a “danger” zone because it had up to 30 attacks. If you didn’t look close enough, you would have missed the part saying attack figures were totaled from the 1882 to 2000. Yes, 30 attacks in 118 years.

I write all of that to simply say be careful what you believe when it comes to changes in the mortgage world. Yes, there have been changes in lender guidelines. Yes, the housing market is down. Yes, the economy may be in a recession. There is truth in all of those statements.

But remember one thing, fear sells. People will shout “the sky is falling” from rooftops in order to get on TV or have their story printed in a magazine. Just because you read it on the internet or hear it on TV does not make it entirely true. Call someone in the industry and ask questions about the changes taking place. Often the reality of a situation isn’t as bad as it sounded on TV. We can’t fear everything all the time, can we?

Clay Jeffreys is a Mortgage Consultant with Hillside Lending, LLC and writer for “Blog Pertaining to the Acquisition of a Mortgage to Purchase a Domicile.” Hillside Lending seeks to provide mortgage brokerage services with the highest standards of service, care, honesty, integrity and value; concentrating on owner-occupied, residential financing. For more information about available programs and interest rates, please visit www.hillsidelending.com.