Back to the Great Recession impulse, wishing for bad "news" not because I want actual conditions to be bad, but because a month or two of bad data at the right moments might spur some actual action (narrator: it was hopeless, they gave up by January 2010, with the trifecta and unemployment at 9.8%, how did they lose so badly the following November, must have been because the professional left wasn't clapping loudly enough).
The flip side is even moderately good data will inspire 30 Washington Post opinion pieces about how everything is great and the government shouldn't do anything to help people.