Lowering the Standard?

The Standard reports:

The Controller and Auditor General released a damning report on how billions of shillings of public funds were lost in dubious deals in the 2004/2005 financial year.

Billions they said. In the relevant paragraphs, the paper then offers details of how that money was siphoned off:

In the Controller and Auditor General’s report, the Office of The President and the Ministry of Water are indicted for paying out Sh21.3m for the installation of lifts that was never done...
The ministry [of Water, presumably], too, is under pressure to explain how it paid Sh57.8 million for a case in which it had been sued by a laboratory firm, although it did not provide details of the case...
The report also faults the Office of the President for overpaying the contractor engaged for projects at Administration Police College at Embakasi and General Service Unit at Kibish.
The report details how the Government lost Sh26 million after the two contractors in the separate projects, were overpaid...
In the same ministry, the auditors discovered that Sh674,000 was paid to various officers as monthly meal allowances for working to reorganise the office of the Public Communication Secretary. The report points out that the duties the officers performed were the same as those under their substantive appointments and were done during normal working hours.

Now do the math. I make it Kshs. 105.774 M lost in underhand deals. This is not a pittance but neither is it "billions." I have no love for the Kibaki Administration but if we are to change the way things are done in Kenya, we have to start with ourselves. Sensationalising and falsifying news reports is a definite no-no. I hope that it was an honest mistake or that perhaps a paragraph containing the rest of the scandals was mislaid (you never know with these snake-rattlers!)