23 d’octubre 2013

The rights and wrongs of headlines

Imagine that you see this headline in the newspaper: "Private health insurance has new 100.000 members". You may think, that's quite a lot. And you forget to read that this news reflects two years, not only one. And you go inside the report and you see that in 2011 there was an artificial jump because 4 companies had not reported previously.
And finally you are looking desperately for the right number. How many people have really bought a voluntary insurance policy in 2012? The answer is 47.370 new members, that's the right figure.
The duplicate coverage ratio is up 0,20 percentage points, to 24,6% of the population (1.842.121) p.22.
And that's all. Forget the newspaper, go straight to the report. This is the advantage of internet access and the reason why some journalists should rethink their work, they should avoid press releases and verify data.

PS.You'll not be able find the original press release on the internet, it has been removed.