Careless Headline Writing

I have noticed over the years that headline writers often try to make stories more sensational than they really are. This one at Yahoo News and Time, however, got me chuckling. The story tells us:

The gap between the super-rich and the poorest half of the global population is starker than previously thought, with just eight men, including Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, owning as much wealth as 3.6 billion people.

That fact is not really surprising, as many people live hand-to-mouth with hardly any accumulated wealth at all. But the headline makes a stronger claim:

Half of the World’s Wealth Is In the Hands of Just Eight Men

Of course, this conclusion does not follow from the fact reported in the story and is not even close to being true.