Is this a good trend? “Murder is up again in 2017, but not as much as last year,” proclaims the headline over a story in fivethirtyeight.com.

I suppose it’s always good news that the number of murders hasn’t risen as much as it could. But many readers will take the headline as a suggestion that we ought to take some solace from the fact that the number of murders is not rising as fast this year as it did in 2015 and 2016. That would be in line with what I see as a tendency of the good folks at fivethirtyeight.com to downplay increases in the number and rates of murder.