Critic: AP emphasizes negativity in housing reports

Tom Blumer writes on the NewsBusters site that the Associated Press seems to always accentuate the negative in the National Association of Realtors report on the housing market.

Blumer wrote, “Granted, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) is a trade organization which will, as trade organizations do, try to put the best face on a bad situation. And granted, part of the press’s job is to filter through hype and false sunniness to report the truth of what’s really going on.

“But that is most emphatically not what the Associated Press did with yesterday’s NAR report on the state of the national housing market.

“Instead, AP failed to report overall statistics in favor of reporting individual metro areas; ignored most of the legitimately good news; ignored an important piece of historical context; and, most importantly, and as has been the case for well over a year in the national business press, emphasized reductions in unit sales while de-emphasizing much smaller reductions in sale prices.”

Read more here.