History as the yardstick: reports on an Aramco fire, Trump’s low approval and North Korea’s latest missile may lean on earlier cases before the full facts are in

Three recent stories arrived before the full facts were in, and the reporting on each reached for an earlier case. Houthi claims of a strike on an Aramco site near Riyadh, which a Saudi-led coalition spokesman called “misleading,” were set beside past claims and attacks on Saudi oil sites. President Trump’s near career-low approval was compared with George W. Bush’s before the 2006 midterms. North Korea’s latest missile, whose type the military did not formally specify, appeared similar to an August launch, a government source told Yonhap. Read together, they may show earlier cases standing in for facts that are not yet known.

Theory - analysis