democracy and free press towards economic growth

[ph]

According to ladislav

"Democracy and free press may not be that good for the economy. In the United Arab Emirates the media is tightly controlled, and any negative stuff is ruthlessly censored. In this economy, the UAE newspapers show that things could never been better. And it helps the economy, believe you me.
In the times of bad economy, nothing will motivate you to go shopping than picking up a local newspaper and seeing that everything is OK, jobs are aplenty and that growth has not been stunted as in other countries. So, you go out there and spend and spend and keep that economy going, or at least help it recover.
No, if you were in England or other such places, you would be bombarded by all exaggerated, pessimistic messages about the impending collapse, layoffs and a depression which is right around the corner. The bad news coming from TV, the radio and your printed media are not a good motivator to get the consumers to start buying things. After hearing the news, you would most probably hold on to your money, stay at home, and not spend anything thereby delaying any economic rebound your country is yearning for so much.
There is something to be said about regulated press, after all, I guess."

Though I agree that censorship and restriction on free media, press and democracy may help the economy grow or at least keep it steady, it definitely helps them encourage them to buy and invest to keep it growing. I think short run it helps.

But in the long run, I also think there'd be integrity issues and less transparency. With the government censoring it, they are hiding information from the public which will make them wonder and become skeptical. Eventually they could find out and discover the corruption associated with it. So I also think with that, it could also become a "cover up" that would be exposed, thus causing loss of trust and faith that causes huge economic issues then with transparency.

What do you think?

[magnum]

I think if the plain was about to crash, I'd want to know it's time to jump out with my parachute.

But most are media is doom and gloom in a mind controlling way, not so much in a truthful way.

lying about things being negative or positive are both equally controlling and negative, anything misdirecting the masses is going to end poorly for the masses.

To be honest, I've given up on even paying attention to news and politics unless it has some kind of effect on my ability to leave the country or harm a country I want to relocate to.