I'd bet that if you took a survey of average people out there, who probably listen to the news, but don't track things themselves, they'd guess the market was way down for the week.
I noticed that ABC news (wife had it on before dinner), they seemed to emphasize the POINTS the Dow was down on down days, but the % the other indexes were down. Seems to me, they usually just call out points for all of them (because I always get aggravated by that - percentages are far more informative).
The Dow is the highest number, so points is the most dramatic, I guess.