Taking part in Journchat Monday evening on Twitter (http://journchat.info/, http://twitter.com/journchat), one question came up that didn’t speak to PR people on the surface; did media hype make the economic situation worse? My answer is yes, "pack journalism" hypes any situation, including wars and perceptions of candidates, out of whack.

But it does mean something to PR. We take advantage of trends to get attention for clients. Are we doing this responsibly? If we think it through, yes. As with anything in PR, we probably do it right more than we get credit for, and wrong more than we should.

For those in PR; do you think of these things when you jump on news trends? For the rest of you; do you take hype into account when reading the news.