Biden: July Inflation Was 0%. Actual July Inflation: 8.5%. Media: Eh, Close Enough.

In July, the price of eggs and milk went up. The price of fruits and vegetables went up. The price of new cars went up. Electricity cost more. Medical costs rose. Alcohol became more expensive. Rent went up.

President Joe Biden bragged about the report listing these increased costs on Wednesday, claiming inflation was at “zero percent” for July, a claim repeated or slightly modified and repeated by most of the media.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) numbers released on Wednesday are calculated and reported, as economic data always are, by taking a variety of factors into account. Prices across different value sets are averaged. It’s possible to select from the data and averages in order to advance or just highlight a particular point of view.

In President Biden’s case, he said that “our economy had zero percent inflation in the month of July.”

On CNN, Senior Biden adviser Gene Sperling said that “there was no inflation” in July. Anchor Ana Cabrera briefly called him out, but backed down when he repeated the claim.

“There was no inflation,” said Sperling. When Cabrera interrupted to say that in fact inflation was at 8.5% in July, Sperling said, “no, for this month I’m saying there was actually no inflation.”

Zero percent, said Biden. No inflation, said Sperling.

But the actual number was 8.5%, not zero percent. The CPI report says that explicitly, writing that “the all items index increased 8.5 percent for the 12 months ending July.”

And that phrasing, “the 12 months ending July,” is the rub. Well that and gasoline prices. Inflation was 8.5% last month. Not zero. The administration is attempting to make it sound like zero because the rate of inflation in June and July was approximate. That’s already playing fast and loose, but considering the fact that prices that Americans pay for almost everything not related to energy went up from the prices in June, and the decrease in the price of oil is from record highs and remains crushingly high …

At best these assertions could be called misleading. That is, if one were to assume a friendly press using the “well you know what they mean” calculus, you could reasonably expect this to be called “misleading.” At worst, and in the literal sense of words like “true” and “correct” or “false” and “incorrect,” the two statements are the latter.

The administration and some media will nevertheless continue to argue that 0% is correct, despite the actual number being 8.5%.

For example, Axios explained under a headline claiming “inflation drops to zero” that inflation did not actually drop to zero.

“Consumer prices were unchanged in July, as plunging prices for gasoline dragged the Consumer Price Index down to zero,” Axios wrote. “Core inflation, which excludes energy and food, rose only 0.3%, below what analysts expected.”

Notice the word “rose.” Inflation rose.

So, no, consumer prices were not unchanged in July, as Axios wrote. The average increase was slower because of gasoline, the overall rate less pronounced on that factor. But prices, the actual amount of money people pay for things, was nothing close to flat, and “zero” is not applicable to anything real.

So it is misleading at best, and false, if one uses the definitions of words, to say that prices were unchanged or inflation was zero. Prices were not unchanged.

A quote attributed to mathematician Hugo Rossi has some applicability here: “In the fall of 1972, President Nixon announced that the rate of increase of inflation was decreasing. This was the first time a sitting president used the third derivative to advance his case for reelection.”

Writing about the economy in 2013, Chris Wilson explained that quote this way:

(A derivative, one recalls, is a rate of change of a value. Nixon was saying that the rising price of goods and services—inflation, our first derivative—was itself rising—second derivative—but that the rate at which it was increasing was on the decline—third derivative.)

That is relevant to the news today, except that both Biden and Sperling stated that there was literally no inflation.

Even though, as noted in some news reports and the CPI report, prices continued to rise, both compared to last year and compared to June.

Clinton administration Treasury Secretary Larry Summers was more careful with the “good news” when speaking with MSNBC’S Andrea Mitchell Wednesday, saying “it would be a mistake for anyone to radically revise their view of the situation based on these numbers.”

In President Biden’s remarks this morning, he acknowledged that prices rose after saying that inflation was zero.

Biden literally stated that the price of some things went up and other things went down, and then repeats the claim that this means there was zero inflation.

American Heritage dictionary defines inflation as “a persistent increase in the level of consumer prices or a persistent decline in the purchasing power of money,” and “the rate at which this increase occurs, expressed as a percentage over a period of time, usually a year.”

The glossary of economic terms from The Economist likewise describes inflation as being “an annual percentage rate of change” — not monthly — in purchasing power. Merriam-Webster defines inflation as “a continuing rise in the general price level usually attributed to an increase in the volume of money and credit relative to available goods and services.”

Inflation is indexed to something, and expressed as a single number for a set of items, because within any given area prices naturally fluctuate over time. That’s why the Consumer Price Index puts out the report and gives inflation a number, as Biden and Axios point out.

And in the case of the July report, they did that once again. That number was 8.5%. Not zero percent. And in nearly every consumer area but energy, the prices increased not just over last year but over the prior month.

There is a word for that increase: Inflation. And a number: 8.5%. Core inflation rose from June to July. There’s three words for that: not zero percent.

But hey, at least he didn’t blame Vladimir Putin this time.

In politics, in kitchen table issues, it’s even more basic. Voters know when everything costs more. They know when they pay more for food and on their electric bill and for shelter. That’s what people know is inflation. The media might be expected to point that out, to caveat number crunching with bare facts.

And if this were not Joe Biden, if it were not a Democrat administration with grim poll numbers now only weeks from a potentially devastating midterm election, you have to ask whether reporters and media outlets would have done so, instead of simply repeating the “zero” claim. Would they fact-check it? Would they say “take it with a grain of salt” if it were someone else in office?

Take the worst-case scenario: Donald Trump. If he had claimed inflation was zero when it was 8.5%, the media would have been fact-checking him all day saying that’s false. When Trump apologists then said “well he obviously means that the average rate of increase in prices, not core inflation, was flat between June and July,” we’d have heard about two thousand “jokes” about taking Trump “seriously not literally.”

Nobody asked, today, whether to take Biden literally when he said that July’s inflation was “zero percent.”

There’s a term for that difference, too: Partisan bias.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.