It's no secret that the leftist media has it out for Florida's successes with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in charge. People have been just flocking to the Sunshine State. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 674,740 people moved to the state in 2021. However, Business Insider managed to mix the numbers up in a piece from last week, a huge error that was later repeated by Jennifer Rubin in her column for The Washington Post.
Kelsey Neubauer's headline from July 11 now reads, "We got it wrong: More people moved out of New York and California than Florida in 2021." As of Wednesday morning, though, the prior version is available via MSN.com, attributing the article to Neubauer and Business Insider India with the headline "More people actually moved out of Florida than New York or California in 2021." Business Insider Africa still has the article up as well, and includes a chart from Neubauer of what she claimed at the time were "out-of-state movers for 2021.
An archived version of both sites is available.
The more recent piece contains an editor's note at the top, and also mentions the Census to try to downplay the numbers:
Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct an error regarding Census data. In 2021, an estimated 469,577 people moved out of Florida, while 674,740 people relocated to the state. An earlier version of the story switched those numbers.
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To be sure, the data collected from the American Community Survey is not an exact representation. It is an estimate based on a collection of information from a limited number of randomly selected residents, according to the US Census Bureau. As a result, the estimates come with accompanying margins of error, which in the case of Florida amounts to plus or minus 25,000 people entering the state and plus or minus 21,000 leaving.
Here's what the original piece wrote about the numbers from the Census:
To be sure, the data collected from the American Community Survey is not an exact representation. It is a scientific estimate based on a collection of information from a limited number of randomly selected residents, according to the US Census Bureau. Still, the data is the first official estimation from the federal government of what pandemic-era outbound migration from each state — a much broader sample size than private research.
The data also undercuts the narrative that people are leaving states like New York and California more disproportionately than other highly populated states. The data shows that these states are just not seeing the inbound migration to counteract the number of those moving out, [Realtor.com Chief Economist Hale said. Overall, Florida's population increased 329,717 between April 2020 and April 2021, according to the state's Office of Economic and Demographic Research.
It even linked back to how "Insider previously reported that Floridians were moving out because of extreme heat and the rising cost of living — driven in part by new residents."
Neubauer's mistake was noted by our sister site of Twitchy, which NewsBusters' coverage also linked back to. Although a tweet was deleted, an archived version exists. There are also screenshots of the charts that Neubauer mixed up.
Team DeSantis' Christina Pushaw was also among those calling out the tweet.
Yep. They got it backwards. 🤦🏻♂️ pic.twitter.com/YOgYN5BlA9
— Stinson Norwood (@snorman1776) July 11, 2023
Kelsey Neubauer (she/her pronouns) is a Columbia University journalism graduate and ... get this... a REAL ESTATE REPORTER. 😳
— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) July 11, 2023
If more people moved OUT of Florida than any other state, please explain why the Florida real estate market is like this.... pic.twitter.com/JorbOK5TSE
The correction was issued right away, something that Jeremy, Redfern, Gov. Ron DeSantis' press secretary, applauded. It's even more awkward, then, that Rubin repeated the same mistake for her column that came three days later. "Florida might pay for MAGA cruelty and know-nothingism," her headline from July 14 read.
Before the text of the column now reads: "A previous version of this article misstated Floridians' state-to-state migration in 2021. According to the Census Bureau, more people moved into Florida than any other state that year. This version has been corrected."
NewsBusters covered this one as well, highlighting how Community Notes had been forced to step in. There were nearly 3,000 replies as well to Rubin's tweet.
Florida has become not where “woke” died but rather where empathy, decency and kindness go to die. And it also is killing their economic future https://t.co/snTIg0QDFF
— Jennifer Now at Threads Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) July 14, 2023
National Review's Charles C.W. Cooke not only called out Rubin for repeating the mistake, but he also made a curious point about how the outlets like The Washington Post fact-checked him.
Here’s Business Insider correcting its absurd mistake on July 11. pic.twitter.com/781rEwCCV6
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) July 15, 2023
It really is jarring to see. When I’ve written for the Post and the Times, I’ve been fact-checked until I bled. I if wrote that there are 50 states, I was asked for a citation. That’s fine—good, even. But, as is evident if you read those papers, it only happens in one direction.
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) July 15, 2023
It really is jarring to see. When I’ve written for the Post and the Times, I’ve been fact-checked until I bled. I if wrote that there are 50 states, I was asked for a citation. That’s fine—good, even. But, as is evident if you read those papers, it only happens in one direction.
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) July 15, 2023
Undeterred, Rubin has since then continued to write about DeSantis, this time about his presidential campaign, with a Tuesday morning headline from July 18 reading "DeSantis’s failures can help the GOP find a real alternative."
Unfortunately for Neubauer and Rubin's initial narrative, the idea that 674,740 people would have moved out of Florida wouldn't have made much sense given what else we now know.
As of April of this year, more than 10,000 New Yorkers had moved to Florida so far in 2023. The governor's office also announced in February that Florida had welcomed 137.6 million visitors in 2022, breaking the record for the highest visitation in state history. And, the Census also revealed last December that population estimates for 2022 made Florida the fastest-growing state for that year.
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