The Fake Headlines
posted 2006.05.23 Tuesday
One nice thing about Google News' aggregation feature is that you can view what headline different news sources are placing on the same story. For a recent example, take the FTC investigation into post-Katrina gar prices. Here is the FTC's summary of the report. Here is the Google News list of stories (note that most of these are just rewrites from one of the major wire services). And a few selected headlines:
FTC Gasoline Price Probe Finds Nothing Illegal (Boston Globe)
FTC Pinpoints Post-Katrina Gas Gouging (CBS News)
Big Oil Cleared by FTC for Price Fixing (CNN)
FTC: Free Market Caused High Gas Prices (UPI)
FTC Sees No Illegal Gas Price Manipulation (Reuters)
FTC Finds Some Gas Price Gouging After Katrina (Seattle Times)
FTC Finds Gas Price Gouging After Katrina (Washington Post)
Look at those last three, confusing, isn't it? Is there "no," "some," or just an implicit "yes" about gas price gouging? It's even funnier, since all of the stories say essentially the same thing.
Actually, the summary of the FTC's report is quite sobering. They do claim to have found "15 examples of pricing at the refining, wholesale, or retail level that fit the relevant legislation’s definition of evidence of 'price gouging.'" But that's 15 examples for the entire country, at all levels of the distribution channel. And the summary doesn't even tell us what this definition of gouging is, probably because it is so variable and often ambiguous based on locality. This rest of the report summary sounds mostly like what any sane economist what tell you: supply and demand determines prices, price controls will make consumers worse off, and the market is functioning just as models of competition would predict.
Jeez, who would have thought?
FTC Gasoline Price Probe Finds Nothing Illegal (Boston Globe)
FTC Pinpoints Post-Katrina Gas Gouging (CBS News)
Big Oil Cleared by FTC for Price Fixing (CNN)
FTC: Free Market Caused High Gas Prices (UPI)
FTC Sees No Illegal Gas Price Manipulation (Reuters)
FTC Finds Some Gas Price Gouging After Katrina (Seattle Times)
FTC Finds Gas Price Gouging After Katrina (Washington Post)
Look at those last three, confusing, isn't it? Is there "no," "some," or just an implicit "yes" about gas price gouging? It's even funnier, since all of the stories say essentially the same thing.
Actually, the summary of the FTC's report is quite sobering. They do claim to have found "15 examples of pricing at the refining, wholesale, or retail level that fit the relevant legislation’s definition of evidence of 'price gouging.'" But that's 15 examples for the entire country, at all levels of the distribution channel. And the summary doesn't even tell us what this definition of gouging is, probably because it is so variable and often ambiguous based on locality. This rest of the report summary sounds mostly like what any sane economist what tell you: supply and demand determines prices, price controls will make consumers worse off, and the market is functioning just as models of competition would predict.
Jeez, who would have thought?
comments (1)
Great post!