In the top headlines feature for ABCNews.com, editors included a tease for a story on oil prices heading towards $147-a-barrel, and chose a photo of a gas marquee showing regular unleaded at $5.219. That's a whopping 27 percent above the nationwide average as recorded at AAA's FuelGaugeReport.com.
The photo was taken by yesterday by AP photographer Paul Sakuma in San Mateo, and the caption that came with it noted that the the price was way above "the average roadside price for gasoline" which on July 10 "stood at $4.104 a gallon _ just a hair below the record $4.108 hit Monday, according to auto club AAA, the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express."
There are many stock photos of gas price marquees floating around the wires and ABCNews.com has at its disposal a graphics department that could render an illustration more in line with what the average American sees at the corner gas station.
But for some reason, ABCNews.com seems to favor pictures from service stations in San Mateo, as my blog entry from May 6 can attest:
We've noted how CNN.com has done it. Today, it's ABCNews.com with its front-page teaser headline "Oil: Another Day, Another Record."
The photo accompanying the AP story filed from Vienna -- yes, as in Austria -- by writer George Jahn depicts a gas marquee from an American gas station showing regular unleaded at $4.419-a-gallon. Here's how the caption for the AP photo by Marcio Jose Sanchez that accompanies Jahn's article reads (emphasis mine):
A motorist fuels up at a gas station in San Mateo, Calif. For those praying that oil's meteoric rise to near $120 a barrel is just another another economic bubble, their hopes may get deflated _ growing demand and tighter supplies are likely to keep oil prices high.
[...]
San Mateo, California, is hardly Averageville, USA. The gas prices there, on average, are much higher than the national average. According to SanFranGasPrices.com, San Mateo averaged $4.014/gallon for regular unleaded on May 6, up two cents from Monday, May 5. The price shown in the marquee pictured for the AP story is 40 cents higher than today's average for San Mateo and 80 cents higher than the national average of $3.610 as reported by AAA's FuelGaugeReport.com.
