Saturday, November 17, 2007

Millions and Billions

Our elite press. Dean Baker:

Editorials in the NYT and Post today give us excellent examples of why the current method of expressing these numbers is such bad reporting. The NYT editorial praised congressional Democrats for standing up to President Bush on the war in Iraq: "house Democrats distinguished themselves this week when they stood up to the White House’s latest military funding steamroller: approving only $50 million of the additional $196 million the president requested for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

That's right folks, the editorial said "millions." They meant "billions." Oh well, we all knew that.