Read carefully
My brother lives in California and called me the other day since we generally talk at least every other weekend. We talked about this and that and since he knows that I'm a Charleston real estate agent and is of course concerned about the current housing market, he asked me how business was.
My answer, thankfully, pretty good, but of course, it could be a little better.
He travels extensively in his business and as many business travelers do, reads USA Today when he does and apparently noticed an article on Charleston home prices. He said he thought he read that Charleston home prices had declined by 30% and asked me about it. I said, no way, Charleston prices were basically flat, down just a percent or two at most, are you sure it wasn't unit sales which are down by about that much. He said he didn't think so and I had to check it out for myself.
So I went online and searched for the article and saw where USA reported unit sales had declined by 30% but median prices were down by 0.6% just as I thought the article should have reported.
Now it could have been the "other Charleston", the capital of West Virginia that USA was reporting on or it might have been the numbers from Charleston WV transposed with the numbers from Charleston SC that were reported in the paper (just like I noticed had been mistakenly reported by the media a couple of years ago).
But the lesson here is that you have to read carefully, don't jump to conclusions, don't panic and whatever you do, don't jump off a tall building if you read bad news.
It might not be as bad as you first think. Or even correct. 
And my brother is much smarter than I just portrayed him to be.