Opening Statement
"The Main Stream Media Is Exaggerating The Intensity Of The Current Economic Status To Create Headlines."
Well, this will be an easy debate. The proof of my side is inherent in the nature of 'The Media'.
The Media's function is take news (events, facts, speculation, and opinion) and distill it, selecting what is considered relevant and important to their readership, in accordance with their individual viewpoints.
The target of that action, the audience, is what makes the distinction between 'mainstream' and non-mainstream media. Mainstream media targets the culture at large, the general public, when selecting the iconic ideas and phrasing they use to describe "what's happening in the world" and "what you need to know".
This is a creative processes, as any journalism professor will tell you, with only occasional nods and glimmers of 'objectivity' involved.
The 'map' the media creates, showing their image of "the state of the world", is never the same as the actual territory of "objective reality", whatever that might be. The creative output of the media is a convenient illusion, which always to some extent exaggerates, downplays, or entirely fabricates, at best a crude approximation of the 'objective ideal' of complete accuracy.
The subjectivity inherent in the process of news-making is shown by a simple example: how traditional newspapers encourage the inverse pyramid approach when composing stories:
Use the “inverse pyramid” structure
Go from the most important material to the least important, and from general points to specific details. Telling a story in chronological order usually isn’t the best way to inform readers. Many people read only the first few paragraphs of a story, so it’s important to start with the most vital information and add details farther down.
[1] "Writing News: A Quick Primer", MIT News Office
Look at that definition, and consider: who decides what is "important"? And what is "vital" information? Is there an 'objective' definition?
Thus, exaggeration is an inherent byproduct of the act of "creating headlines". To create headlines, media must, at times, exaggerate.
Now let's consider the spectrum of audience, and media that range from small, specialized publications to larger "mainstream" media outlets. What's the difference?
The difference is the audience, their expectations and world-views. As the audience becomes larger, the many viewpoints and interests they hold become more diverse and varied. Deciding what is 'vital' and 'important' becomes much more a matter of manufacturing consensus, attempting to to unify a wide and often contradictory range of informational appetites, than simply providing specific facts.
At the national level of mainstream media, nearly every story, and the distillation of importance it purports as 'objective', will be considered exaggeration by many, downplay by others, and a complete ignoring of the relevant facts by some. Current economic reporting is certainly showing this.
These obvious corollaries to the very nature of media reporting prove my case: to create headlines, the mainstream media must exaggerate.
I am sure my opponent will attempt to 'go narrow', and attempt to avoid this obvious conclusion, clouding the issue with a biased selection of 'examples'. In fact, I welcome and look forward to the robust discussion we are sure to have. Scratching beyond the simple surface, the breadth of study involved in this topic is vast: the structural process of reporting, the commercial nature of the media industry, the background of events that have recently placed 'economic news' at the forefront of the agenda, the interaction between political consensus making and mainstream news.
We'll examine these subjects, and the relationships between them, as necessary to this debate - oh dear moderator, could we have 50,000 words each to describe our contentions, rather than the mere 10,000 or so we are allowed here? We'll have to make do with what's available to us. This is no worry, as the case I describe here is consistent, both largely and specifically. We will merely uncover that which is necessary, interesting, and applicable, and leave the larger image of 'the whole truth' in the responsible hands of the perceptive reader.
Look more closely at the phrasing of the topic. Am I the only one who finds the phrase "the current economic status" a little clumsy? I am sure the moderator meant, and initially wrote, "the current economic crisis", but later decided to change the phrasing. Interesting that the very loaded term "crisis" has been made synonymous with the state of the economy today, to the point that other, less exaggerated references seem slightly awkward and unusual.
I'm not going to downplay the issues with the world-wide economy, or claim that problems don't exist. They certainly do, and many always have. I just want the reader to consider:
Who decided there is a "crisis", and who has put that label in the minds of the public at large?
Thank you 44soulslayer, the floor is yours!
My statement is not the same as saying “All media outlets rely upon distorting facts, exaggerating stories and senationalising them to
entice viewers”. Presenting information in its most engaging form is not the same as distorting information to make it more interesting. 
