There we lots of newspaper headlines and smiley faces on the network news programs yesterday, reporting that house sales were actually "up 4.7% in February!"That does kind of beg the question, however, "compared to what?" One might be excused for assuming that was compared to February 2008, but it was actually compared to January 2009, which was abysmal. Compared to February 2008 (the more logical month to contrast, and one in which sales were only kind of bad), Feb '09 house sales were actually down 41%, which is not really that good; although you'd never know it by the big goofy grin on Brian Williams' face as he told us there was "finally some good economic news to report."
I read recently that fewer than one-third of Americans can name the three branches of government. An even smaller percentage of journalists can interpret data.
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