For this kind of lie we need look no further than Alan McQuaid's analysis of the recent DAFT.ie report on the property market.

The Report stated that house asking prices had falling 19% in 2009, and would fall 15% in 2010.

How do you turn that into a good positive headline?
It's not easy, so pay attention class.

What you need to do is drop in a prediction of some future event, it must be at least 6 months into the future, so that the majority of the mainstream media won't think to ask you about it when it doesn't happen.

In this case the prediction was that prices would continue to fall in 2010, but would begin to increase towards the end of the year.

Boom. Right there you've created your headline. House prices to turn around in 2010.

The key is Don't dwell on the overall expected fall of 15%.

This technique has the advantage that if house prices fall, but show no signs of a turn around, you can point out you were right about the fall, and simply drop all mention of the turnaround.

Congratulations to Alan for a text book deployment of this lying technique.