"Family food shop up '£15 a week'" - BBC News

[senji]

I spotted this article headline over the BBC ticker this morning. Following recent discussions on IRC and elsewhere about innumeracy in BBC reporting and misleading reporting using graphs my eye was drawn to this headline with its unqualified assertion about family food spending. Before loading the article I had visions of some kind of

Comments

[hmmm_tea]

If you are spending £100 a month and it goes up by 15%, surely that's an extra £180 (ie £15 x 12) a year rather than £780?

[hmmm_tea]

Actually, I take that back, I should learn the difference between a week and a month.

[pm215]

"Suspect 'research'" is one of the guidelines for reading newspapers Andrew Marr gives in his book _My Trade_. Recycling press releases is the stock-in-trade of much modern journalism, AFAICT.