{"id":1876,"date":"2011-07-15T17:06:37","date_gmt":"2011-07-15T17:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=1876"},"modified":"2011-07-15T17:06:37","modified_gmt":"2011-07-15T17:06:37","slug":"eight-european-banks-fail-stress-test-panic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=1876","title":{"rendered":"Eight European Banks Fail Stress Test. Panic!!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a classic example of a deceptive news story, the BBC announced today in their TV news bulletin that 8 European banks failed the stress test &#8211; meaning they <em>might<\/em>\u00a0not survive a financial crisis.<\/p>\n<p>But later listening to Euronews (and in fact in the online <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-14169940\">article by the BBC<\/a>), I hear a slightly different slant to the story &#8211; 8 our of 90 banks tested failed. Or 9%. Or to put it another way, 91% of European banks passed the stress test.<\/p>\n<p>Merely announcing that 8 failed the test does not give an indication of the scale of the problem &#8211; was it 8 out of 8 ? 8 out of 80 ? Or 8 out of 800? Given the current climate in the wake of the recent banking crisis it is not unreasonable to assume that 8 failing the test is a much more serious problem than it really is.<\/p>\n<p>Is it so much to ask that the media actually spend some time <em>thinking<\/em>\u00a0about statistics and giving a proper slant to the news they announce ? Saying 9% failed the test is just as quick as saying 8 banks failed, and gives us more information, and the objection that some people may not understand percentages is pretty bogus &#8211; those who do not understand them are unlikely to be bothered by the &#8220;8 banks failed test&#8221; statement anyway.<\/p>\n<p>A case of over simplification leading to unintended (or was it intentional?) deception.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a classic example of a deceptive news story, the BBC announced today in their TV news bulletin that 8 European banks failed the stress test &#8211; meaning they might\u00a0not survive a financial crisis. But later listening to Euronews (and in fact in the online article by the BBC), I hear a slightly different slant <a href='https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=1876' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[12],"tags":[219,629,175],"class_list":["post-1876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","tag-banks","tag-europe","tag-statistics","category-12-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-ug","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1876"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1877,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1876\/revisions\/1877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}