Some Real (Fake) News...

With all we've reading about and hearing about lately is a thing called "fake news."

This kind of news story isn't a new thing at all. In fact, it was fairly common in the days of the Great Depression...namely the crash of the stock market! Exaggeration of the news, especially in newspapers, was and is a fairly common practice Here's an example...

Stock Market Crash Suicides

 

Photo credit: Wikimedia

 

The Stock Market Crash of 1929 is widely credited with two things: causing the Great Depression of the 1930s and leading to a mass suicide of stock brokers. The former is still taken quite seriously, but the latter has become a bit of a dark joke. Any film set during the crash is guaranteed to include legions of distraught bankers leaping from the windows of office buildings.

But only two men leaped to their deaths on Wall Street that day. A few more killed themselves by hanging and shooting afterward, but overall, suicides were fairly rare. In fact, the suicide rate was significantly lower than the previous summer when, ironically, the market peaked. 

As is usually the case, exaggeration was to blame for this complete non-story. Newspapers billed the few actual suicides as a full-on national tragedy, claiming New York pedestrians had to “pick their way among the bodies” in the streets. And the rest was (completely nonsensical) history.

Like I said, nothing new about "fake news" other than the fact we hear so much more and much faster than ever. Still, fake news is still fake!

Coffee out on the patio again this morning.