It is fair to say headlines from the past week have made fairly grim reading for anyone banking on more surges in house prices. When a closely followed property market survey came up with its weakest result on record, newspapers splashed the story across their front pages and TV news reporters interviewed crestfallen homeowners with tales of financial woe. "More gloom as house prices plummet," said Sky News. The Guardian declared: "House prices fall at fastest rate since 1978."
But is it simply making the situation worse?
Such negativity may not be proven to influence market movements, but it does highlight an inherent tension for the media between trying to inform and wanting to entertain, says Martin Weale, director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research thinktank:
Meanwhile in the same paper Peter Wilby looks at the London Standard's possible influenve on the London mayor hustings and in particular former BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan
If Boris Johnson becomes mayor of London next month, he may well, like John Major in 1992, thank friends in the press. This time, however, it will be the Evening Standard, not the Sun, wot won it. Since December, London's only paid-for evening newspaper - and the only paper of any sort to give the mayoral election campaign substantial coverage - has published many stories that have been highly damaging to the incumbent, Ken Livingstone.
In the Independent Stephen Glover takes a close look at the Barclay Brothers at the Telegraph saying that
There are times when it is entirely right for proprietors to intervene
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