If you carefully pick the start and end dates, you can report a 42% increase in a (noisy but) essentially flat line. See the other comment by ajross below, or go look at the chart yourself. The problem here is the interpretation of the data.
They carefully picked the most recent data available, and interpreted it correctly.
The media is reporting that the public perception is that crime is going up when it is going down, but if the victimization survey is correct, the public perception is that crime is going up when it is going up.
That doesn't mean the public perception hasn't been wrong in the past - it has - but it wasn't wrong during the period of the most recent available data, again, if the victimization survey rather than the FBI data is correct.
