Why is there so little honesty and neutrality in reporting the news?

When talk of a housing crisis/bubble first began, much of the media did there best to debunk the idea. False optimism was running rampant and many stubbornly kept insisting that NOTHING was wrong. The same is true now. The truth is my generation (aged 25-35) has never seen anything like this current financial scene before. And despite the facts that Wall Street is in a state of crisis, there are still too many false optimists in the media who are insisting that this is essentially a hiccup in the economy. Why so much disinformation? Is this supposed to suppress any possibility of widespread panic?