Burnt out yet by negative real estate news?

The real estate agents I interview frequently take the media to task, often blaming them for exacerbating the housing slump with their steady drumbeat of negative news.

I usually scoff at this: The media aren’t causing the bad news. They’re reporting it. Home sales are down. Housing prices are slipping. Foreclosures are rising. That’s not media spin. That’s reality.

But, do the real estate agents have at least a small point? Does the steady diet of gloomy housing reports actually make the current housing crisis seem worse than it is? Do negative stories on a near daily basis erode seller confidence?

In short, has all the negative real estate coverage burned out a nation of buyers of sellers? I remember before the housing slump, it seemed that newspapers and their readers couldn’t get enough of those stories touting residential real estate as the nation’s greatest investment. Heck, I wrote an awful lot of those stories.

Now the stories are going the other way, and no one seems to enjoy reading — or writing, truthfully — them.

So, I ask all of you readers: Does the media share some of the blame for extending the pain of this housing slump?