Apparently, nobody in the media knows the difference between a first and second derivative.

The media doesn't understand derivatives of any sort, first, second, or financial.

I'm not so sure. They use the following technique very effectively. If for example country A has a much larger military budget than country B, but they want to demonize country B, they then shift to first derivatives -- i.e. country B's budget is growing faster, and don't mention absolute quantities at all. In general, there's often a very skilful choice of y, y' or y'', according to the bias of the source.

The only thing I haven't seen yet is recourse to y'''. :)

Another very common trick in print or video is charts with a judicious use of baseline tweaking, or selecting log or linear for scaling, for the desired effect of course.

Ohhhhhhhh, I dunno...
Remember what y''' is called? Seems to be no shortage of jerks out there in the Talking Head Class.

davebygolly,

You haven't seen y'''? It in mechanics is called "jerk" which seems to sum up TPTB.