A quibble

I keep coming across stories with headlines like "US Housing Prices Fall" and "Slide in US House Prices Stokes Recovery Worries." What we actually know is that house prices fell in October, two months ago. We really don't know what's happening to house prices right now (my guess: stable or falling slightly). Reporters often react to economic news releases as if they provide information about what's happening right now when in fact the data is rather old. Another example is the tendency of newspapers to cover breathlessly the release of state-by-state unemployment numbers ("most states experienced a rise/fall in unemployment") when that release comes out a month after we learn about national unemployment.