Imagine for a moment that you are traveling on business far from home. You wake up in the morning to USA Today slipped under your door with the headline: "HOME PRICES PLUNGE FURTHER. Declines likely to go on as sales fall." Now you understand why hotel windows are sealed - to keep travel ling homeowners from jumping out them.

Yesterday's (November 29) headlines were just one more example of media distortion. I won't even go into the fallacy of the national real estate market. Here's what the story in USAT said: "The median price for an existing home plunged by a record 5.1% in October, shrinking values back to March 2005 levels...." Does they mean to say that in one month alone values fell 5.1%?

The headline of the NAR press release was: "Mixed Results for October Existing-Home Sales; Mortgages Improving." Here's just a snippet of what the NAR press release said: "The national media existing-home price for all housing types was $207,800 in October, down 5.1 percent from October 2006 when the median was $218,900...." Hmmm. Very different for prices to drop 5.1% in one year compared to 5.1% in one month, no?

Come on, folks in the media. Stop the distortions.