Business reporting pet peeves

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• Target and Wal-mart seem like competitors to me. If you open a Target next to a Wal-Mart, you would find that some Wal-Mart customers will immediately switch to Target. Others will shop at both. Some will stick with Wal-Mart. If you've been to both, you'll note there's pretty heavy overlap in the products sold there. But like any other retailers, the stores try to distinguish themselves from the pack.

  Take another example. Satellite and terrestial radio have different demographics -- satellite radios users are more affluent, for instance -- but they are most certainly competitors.

• How about not understanding business accounting 101 and reporting net loss as the news even though on a cash flow basis, the company actually made money?

  Or attributing daily fluctuations in stock indexes to some news event, when the most likely explanation for the change is mere random variance, especially when the changes are not statistically significant.

  Reporting job loses as layoffs when it's merely not replacing open positions.

• I guess it makes sense that an inability to multiply is not one of that blogger's pet peeves.

  The article says:

  >> selling 1 car for $X in profit is better than selling 5 cars for $0.5X in profit.
  HUH?
  1 * X = X
  5 * .5X = 2.5X
  Isn't 2.5X in profit "better than" 1X in profit?

• From the longer list on the link, I'd add my pet peeve of reporting foreclosures by saying X number of families lost their homes when: foreclosure is a legal process that CAN lead to repossession; not all foreclosed homes are primary residences; and a portion of those foreclosed homes belonged to investors rather than families.