I think https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/international-students... is plain lying of the most common kind the NYTimes does: selective citing of statistics so you can claim that everything you said is true but you create an impression at odds with reality.

See http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/03/one... for more details.

You are of course correct that omitting details to fit the narrative is what's going on here. This particular case is more egregious that most in that "details" is "two out of the three equally important numbers in the study's results".