The News is Making it Worse

I am now home for the Thanksgiving holiday. Yesterday, my Mom and I were in the car together. For whatever reason we were talking about the news.... I think it stemmed from talking about the decreasing gas prices (FYI, in Oregon it is still over two bucks for a gallon of gas). Anyway, she commented that the news makes everything worse lately.

She then went on a tangent about how the news makes everyone panic, which then causes the worse to happen. Like, the news will report that the housing market could collapse, and so all these people stop buying homes, and bam! It's crashing! Or, the news reports that a credit crisis could be looming, so people stop taking out loans, stop spending money, and then boom! Credit crisis! The news reports that Barack Obama is probably going to win the election, so people don't bother to vote for the opposing side and zing! Obama's our winner! And so on and so on. Obviously my mom was oversimplifying everything (as parents have a tendency to do), and we can't really blame the news for everything bad in the world (we already blame President Bush for that). But, I thought her tangent posed an interesting theory, which I am posing as a query to you all.

Can the news media predestinate the news? Does reporting possibilities cause them to turn into actualities? How much influence does the news have on current events?