Massaging Numbers and Dishonesty

I just got one of those cheerleading emails from our public relations folks, the sort they send out pretty much every week.  This one had a blurb that said that our [Program] was rated in the top five on the US News and World Report thingy.  It had a clicky link, so I clicked, and it took me to a blurb on my uni's website, that pretty much said the same thing.  But there's no link to the actual US News article or site.  So of course, I googled it.

And for [Program] we're actually tied for a teen #.  That's good, heck, great for our regional school.  But it's not top 5.

But you can add limiters, so I started playing with them.  And yes, if you add a specific limiter, there we are, top 5.  But the blurb doesn't say anything about the limiter which is totally reasonable, and could have been honestly clarified with one more word in the blurb.  And honestly, no one reading the blurb would have worried about the limiter.

But as it is, we sound dishonest.  I hate that our PR folks feel like they need to be dishonest, to make us try to sound better than we are.  (And we're pretty good at what we do.)