The media have been barking up the wrong tree for while, insisting the economy is in recession when we’ve yet to have even one quarter of negative GDP growth.
But of course the mainstream media keep digging around for more reasons to say the economy has gone to the dogs. NBC’s “Nightly News” recently claimed that pets are the “silent victims of this whole economic downturn” because they were given up by their owners whose homes were foreclosed.
Now, a July 28 article on MSNBC.com claims that the economy is to blame for a rise in pet thefts.
Interestingly, the article by MSNBC contributor Kim Campbell Thornton also notes that “Police reports don't make a distinction between pet theft and other property theft, so there's no way to pinpoint the exact number of stolen pets each year, but anecdotally, officers say that pet theft is increasing this year.”
One of the reasons explored in the article as to why thieves would go after pets is that people may steal pets in order to give them to someone else as a gift. Another reason given is that because pet owners increasingly view their pets as members of the family, they are willing to pay large sums of money in rewards if their pet goes missing.
A Rasmussen Reports telephone survey released on July 21 showed that fifty percent of voters “believe the media makes economic conditions appear worse than they really are.” Maybe it’s because the media make bizarre connections like this.
