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A CTV anchor reported that prices were rising in Lithuania — but didn’t bother to check what exactly was going up, or by how much
The newscast inflated Lithuania’s actual inflation rate more than sixfold.
Milk prices in Lithuania have jumped nearly a third in the past year, and inflation has topped 20%, the anchor claimed. The Weekly Top Fake team crunched the numbers to see just how far off she was.
On March 26, 2025, an anchor on CTV’s “News” program reported on rising energy prices, higher taxes, and the resulting spike in food costs in Lithuania.
“Rising prices — that’s how Lithuanians themselves describe what’s happening in the country. And food prices are at the center of it all. Milk alone has gone up more than 30% in the past year. … Right now, inflation in Lithuania is just shy of 22.5%,” she said.
Milk prices in Lithuania have indeed gone up by 30%. But that’s at the farm level — the price producers pay to farmers. In other words, dairy plants making butter, cheese, yogurt, and other products are now paying more for raw milk. Experts say the price hike is driven by lower raw milk production and growing demand.
To see how much that increase has actually hit consumers, the WTF team compared dairy prices in Lithuanian stores during the last week of March in 2024 and 2025. The smallest increase was in low-fat milk — up nearly 3% over the year. Butter prices are up 7%. Low-fat cottage cheese saw an 11% jump. That means the CTV anchor exaggerated the scale of dairy price hikes in Lithuania. In Belarus, according to Belstat, butter prices rose 5% over the past year, while milk and cottage cheese went up 7%.
As for inflation in Lithuania — which the anchor claimed had topped 20% — it was actually 3.5% year over year in February. In Belarus, the yearly inflation rate hit 5.6% during the same period.
