The New York Times style guide must make for interesting reading. Surely, there’s an admonishment somewhere near the top: Insert into any article, no matter how unrelated to the president-elect, a slam on Donald Trump. And if you can dress it up as a “fact check,” all the better.
Consider the latest effort from Emily Badger, of the Times‘ Upshot blog. Badger’s piece, published Thursday, argues—convincingly and intuitively—that falling crime rates over the past thirty years have played a big part in luring the young and wealthy back into cities from outer-ring suburbs. Yet she can’t resist taking a shot at the president-elect: “Another end-of-year fact-check, while we’re at it: Mr. Trump claimed during the campaign that the homicide rate in his new home in Washington rose by 50 percent. In fact, it fell by 17 percent in 2016,” she wrote.”
Now let’s back up. As Badger notes, Trump made his assertion during the campaign. Specifically, it appears, during the Republican convention, which occurred in July of 2016. As it happens, between 2014 and 2015, the murder rate in Washington did rise by 54 percent. In other words, the then-candidate was simply citing the most recently available data. That the murder rate ultimately fell in 2016 does not mean that something Trump said in the past was then false. Badger’s “fact check” looks even worse when one takes into account the context of Trump’s assertion. Here is what he said (emphasis mine):
It’s clear, in other words, that he was referring to “last year’s” statistics—those that were most recently available.
In his address, Trump also noted that Barack Obama is president. After January 20, does that statement become a lie or does it merely reflect the reality as it was when he gave the address?
