This year’s recession is the first in which the media has truly been unleashed. Television, newspapers, magazines and online sources feed on each other in an endless reinforcing cycle. This, ladies and gentlemen, is press freedom on steroids. It’s as dangerous as it is liberating.

Media outlets pick up on each other’s stories, magnifying the impact of everything that surfaces. Molehills turn into mountains overnight. Narratives are constructed, deconstructed and resurrected. Fender benders become pile-ups. Stubbed toes become decapitations. Two-bit activists become heroes of socialist labor.

So too with reports that the economy is slowing down. No, wait, it’s stalling. It’s shrinking; collapsing; imploding; falling off a cliff.

Pundits in the media, feeding off journalists, begin to proclaim that massive crises call for massive government intervention — that huge scale alone justifies another kind of huge scale. What they advise — though not intentionally — is acting hard, not acting smart. Suddenly, politicians have a quasi-Keynesian excuse to engage in an orgy of useless spending at taxpayer expense.

Here’s the real news: The economy is in a recession that may last for some time. Period. It doesn’t have cancer, it’s not on fire and it’s certainly not falling off a cliff. If you want to see falling off a cliff, go to Zimbabwe.

Many reporters and opinion writers — and worst of all, Internet bloggers — love hyperbole because it grabs eyeballs. It gets the story — and the byline — read.

One might say it’s better to be overly afraid than risk being complacent. So what’s the problem with all these doom-and-gloom stories? The problem is that people’s expectations color their actions. Ephemeral words have real consequences.

Individuals hear the economy is “imploding” and that all hell is going to break loose — if it hasn’t already. Their confidence is shaken. Consumers, fearful of losing their jobs, stop buying things or giving to charity. Students delay graduation or hunker down in grad school instead of joining the workforce. Investors sell off stocks and flee to cash, gold and Treasury bills. These distortions of behavior occur in large part because of fear.

This fear-driven behavior will inevitably be accompanied by defensive responses by the business sector, which responds to both real problems in the economy and problems created by irrational anxiety. Entrepreneurs stop creating new firms. Corporations stop hiring people. Banks stop lending money even to creditworthy borrowers — and each other ­— as standards that were once too loose suddenly become far too tight.

If the media — in both news and opinion segments — continues to abdicate its responsibility to avoid alarmist fear mongering, dire predictions of depression will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Then the “nine most terrifying words in the English language” will resurface: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” And suddenly, when at last the proper time has come for John Q. Public to be mortally afraid, he won’t be. Big government will promise land, peace and bread: a survivable mediocrity. By then, that’s all people will want — and that’s all they’ll get.

Reach columnist Russ Wung at opinion@dailyuw.com.