There probably isn't enough room in Yahoo Answers to list all the ways they accomplish this, but I'll give you one that I learned in a marketing class.
It's not only the media, but the government and the internet uses the same techniques.
When it comes to the stock market (unemployment rate, interest rate or other measuring stick), they'll use words like: surges, jumps, tumbles, crashes to describe minor movements in the Dow or an individual stock if they want to make it sound like a large movement.
I'll start by asking you which sounds larger: $50,000 or 2.5%? It's apples and oranges.
If they want something to sound larger or smaller than it really is, they will use actual numbers or percentages depending upon how they want it to sound. Example, if the price of a $200 stock goes up 5 points during one month, they may report it as a surge. Five points is not a large movement in one month. If you have 10,000 shares of that stock, you would gain $50,000 that month. If you wanted to sound like you made a lot of money, you'd say you gained $50,000. But if you wanted to hide your $ gain, you'd say you earned only 2.5% because you aren't saying 2.5% of the the value of the stock you own. If you want to make it sound like a real big gain, you could annualize your % gain by multiplying by 12 which would be 30% per annum.
