You have to understand a subject to a certain degree before you even recognize when you're being lied to. Reporters are clueless idiots, particularly when it comes to hard sciences like mathematics. They don't understand that a decreasing rate of inflation is not the same thing as decreasing prices. They fall for the "reducing" the deficit argument for the same reason: they don't understand that reducing the deficit is only reducing how fast the national debt grows. It's still growing.