It may not seem like a big thing, but you and I know it, and journalists know it, and so do marketers and political advisors: words matter. Consider today's Google News headlines regarding October unemployment rates.







On top of this block of stories about unemployment figures, the Wall Street Journal's headline says the jobless rate declines in 23 states, but the teaser from the article refers to the rate as "little changed in most states." Meanwhile, the article from Bloomberg claims that the rate in Nebraska "remained" 4.6 pct:

Nebraska's unemployment rate stayed steady at 4.6 percent in September

However, a few sentences later, they seem to suggest a different picture:

The state's July 2010 rate was 4.7 percent and June's was 4.9 percent.

But you might say, yeah, but that's a pretty small change, small enough to maybe qualify as "staying steady." But then, what do we make of another bit of data mentioned later in the article:

Unemployment also spiked in Lincoln, the capital city, to 4.1 percent, from August's 3.9 percent.

So a drop of .2 percent over two months is "staying steady", but an increase of .2 percent qualifies as a "spike".

One has to wonder if the Bloomberg has some vested interest in painting a picture of unrelenting gloom here.

The funniest thing about all this? These rates--the "steady" 4.6 percent for Nebraska and the "spike" to 4.1 percent for Lincoln are HALF the unemployment rate for the country as a whole. So these ten-of-a-percent changes that seem so intransigently headed up are in fact changes to a number that most cities in the US would kill for.

Again, one has to wonder....does this sound like news reporting to you?