If you pay even minimal attention to business news in any form of media, you probably know something about difficult times for McDonald’s. The worldwide burger giant has been squeezed by the growth of “fast casual” eateries like Chipotle providing food perceived to be of a higher quality, leading to a profit-sapping addiction to drawing customers with their bargain “dollar menu”. Now they have added all-day breakfast in a last ditch effort to turn things around.

How bad have things become? Here is a survey of stories from just the first half of this month:

McDonald’s Sales Fall Worldwide
Is McDonald’s All-Day Breakfast Turning Out to Be a Big McFailure?
Is The McDonald’s Disaster Getting Worse?

Of course, these stories make for positively cheerful reading compared to what the Business Insider website published on October 16:

McDonald’s franchisees believe the brand is in a “deep depression” and could be facing its “final days,” according to a new survey.

Again, anyone who has picked up the business section of a newspaper or turned on CNBC or Bloomberg TV lately has almost certainly seen or heard something along these lines. It must be true, right?

As it turns out, not really. Here is a survey of stories from the past 3 days, so keep in mind these are all within about 2 weeks of the stories linked above:

McDonalds Announces Stronger Sales and Profit
Call It a McComeback?
McDonald’s Shares Hit Record, as Turnaround Shows Progress
McDonald’s all-day breakfast: Fast start, but what’s next?

So how do we account for this eye-popping discrepancy over the course of a few days?

I am sure more than a few McDonald’s franchisees who enjoyed nine consecutive years of sales growth in the recent past grew to believe they were entitled to a perpetual money printing machine that didn’t require investment in order to keep up with changing times and changing tastes, and now love to complain about their problems to anyone who will listen.

However the REAL problem is that a sizable percentage of the people writing on the topic of business for newspapers, TV and especially the internet are fucking idiots.

Let this be a lesson to anyone who might be tempted to take investing or financial advice from “experts” in the media!