The Truth and the Media

By Mohammed | October 16, 2008

I rarely watch the news. I make a point to rarely watch the news. However, something happened this past week that I wanted to share here.

A couple of days ago the “teaser” for a newscast in my city mentioned something about real estate and my little suburb that I live in. So consequently I made a point to watch the newscast.

The story about my suburb started with one of the reporters standing in front of a vacant house. She said that the real estate market was getting so bad that most of the houses were vacant and that the neighborhood was a “ghost town”. Those were the exact words that she used–”Ghost town”. Then she went on to talk about how many empty homes there were and how many homes were for sale and what a bleak outlook it was for the new home builders and the people who were trying to sell. The people who were watching the newscast who happen to live on the other side of town probably thought that things were “really bad” out here in my pretty little suburb.

But here is the truth as I see it.

I actually recognized the house that she was standing in front of. I knew exactly where it was and I am very familiar with the neighborhood. Yes, that house is vacant. However, I know for sure that it has been vacant for at least 3 years. It is not something new that just popped up recently.

Since the news story broke we drove up into the neighborhood again. Green lawns, Halloween decorations, kids playing in the yard and people walking their dog was what we saw. There was not even one vacant home that we saw that we didn’t remember being vacant from long before now. And definitely, by no means whatsoever did it look like a “ghost town”.

Well, actually that might not be completely true as I did see many, many ghosts and goblins, witches and jack-o-lanterns and Halloween decorations to commemorate the season but I don’t think that is what she meant when she said “ghost town”. It specifically sounded like she was sounding the call of alarm that the real estate market here is failing and that things are getting really bad!

“The sky is falling”.

The problem is that it’s not true!! I checked it out myself and it’s not true! There are no more vacant homes now than there was a year ago or even 2 years ago (back when everything was supposedly “good”) and there are no more homes on the market in that neighborhood than usual. Now as far as time on the market goes and those kind of market conditions, since I am no longer a Realtor, I don’t keep up with that stuff too much. But looking at it from a layperson’s viewpoint it looks just the same as it has for the last couple of years.

Nothing has really changed. It is not a “ghost town”!

So it just goes to show and proves to me at least that the media doesn’t always get it right and if you believe everything you read and everything you see in the media you may just be focused upon the worst of the world instead of the best of the world.

And what do you really want to focus on if you want to powerfully create your life?

There are always, always more good things in this world than bad. Where is your focus?

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