My thoughts on this lean sort of towards what Shimon said. Yes, I think it would be good for the news not to keep harping on stock movements and things that unnecessarily make the country more nervous, BUT... News is a business. To a large extent, they report what people think is important (or at least strive to report what people think is important.) And, frankly, even if the people are dead wrong about it, most of them think that the swings of the Dow or other stock indexes are important. Particularly if they have a lot of money invested, and in most cases even if they don't plan to take it out for 20 more years. An ideal news system might balance for that and report what people ought to know or hear, rather than what people think they need to know, or want to know...but that strategy probably wouldn't earn as much money. And underneath it all, the media are still businesses.