Well, it had to happen. You’re not going to attend any gathering these days – dinner party, conference or even bus stop queue – without hearing the fourth estate receiving a good kicking. Here in Portmeirion yesterday afternoon at the 'Names Not Numbers' conference, the media took a mauling from an ad man - and an ex-McKinseyite ad man at that. William Eccleshare, the boss of BBDO in Europe, took the great inky unwashed to task for being such a bunch of Cassandras and resolutely ignoring all those green shoots of recovery that we currently see springing out everywhere through the frozen lawns.

Thanks to our bad attitude, we’ve infected the general public with a bad case of depression, said Eccleshare - they now believe the end of the world is nigh and are behaving like a miserable coven of 7th Day Adventists. And, paralysed with angst, they’ve stopped spending so much at his client Sainsbury’s. 

This tirade got a good reception. Yes, said one sage in the audience from Edelman, the media consistently comes lowest of all the groups surveyed in the trust index. Lower even than politicians. I heard from a 'very very senior' BBC person the other day, remarked another, that they’ve had enough of Humphreys' and Paxman's unrelenting gloom, but they cannot do anything about it. Paxo’s out of control.

Well just hang on one sec. We’re currently in a situation in the UK where Honda in Swindon is shut until the summer, a huge swathe of the banking industry has been nationalised and investment banks have been as good as been wiped out. Where Jim Rogers, Soros’s sidekick from across the water, says UK plc is washed-up, with nothing left to sell or trade with. What are we supposed to do? Pronounce, like a village idiot, that everything’s sunny in the garden? That all will be well and all manner of things will be well? 

But there’s another point. The marcomms industry (with advertising in the vanguard) has ridden the boom years very nicely, urging us all to spend and borrow more to make the good times go on for just a bit longer. Wouldn’t any reasonable person say the orgy of consumption that characterised the last ten years has been encouraged by the siren voices of ad men? The ones who whispered in the ear of the punter chasing a 120% mortgage and a couple of buy-to-let loans: go on, go for it, carpe diem. Never mind that nobody in the UK has saved a penny in the last decade for tomorrow, next week, or their old age.

We’ve lived beyond our means and now the wretched price has to be paid. It ain’t Armageddon, as I’ve written here before. It’s called a correction, and during a correction, people don’t spend so much because they’re trying to reflect on what went wrong. They’re anxious, and it’s our duty as media to tell them what we see as the truth about the world.

In today's bulletin:
Crosby falls on sword after HBOS whistleblower row
Unemployment up again as Bank admits 'deep recession'
Ashley makes approach for Blacks
Salad days no more for UK graduates
Editor's blog: Pontificating in Portmeirion