Whatever happened to journalistic ethics?

The various writers and talking heads are daily whipping the public into a state of fear and panic. It’s what they do. Tuesday, all the major papers rang out the news that it is official; the U.S. economy is in recession. In spite of the daily sky-is-falling exclamations, this was a surprise to me since we are not officially in recession according to the accepted definition of two consecutive quarters of negative Gross National Product. Undistracted by mundane facts, the slavish media drones rushed to print this juicy proclamation that came from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The thoughtless news items did not include any real analysis, including the substantial fact that we are not in recession according to the historic measure. With further checking, I found that the NBER is not a government group, but a private organization which may have its own agenda. Since when does a private group get to decide for the country whether we are in a recession? For days before Thanksgiving, the corrupt press repeatedly quoted those who predicted we would have the worst day after Thanksgiving shopping day ever. We now know that sales were up seven percent. Whatever happened to journalistic ethics?