If they are doing this deliberately (as opposed to just not properly understanding the difference between "increase" and "rate of increase", then they are doing it to influence public opinion to their side, or at the very least, sensationalizing the story so more people will pay to read it.

But using the same logic, don't you feel that seizing on such a nit-pick is being done for the same motive; that it is being utilized to communicate that these journalists are biased, and that therefore nothing they are saying is to be trusted? And that easily translates to "the scientists they are quoting either don't know what they are talking about, or they're making all this up".

Remember, this is no longer a scientific issue. It has been turned into a political one; which really means it has economic consequences. If its going to cause money or inconvenience to deal with this problem, those who stand to lose money or be inconvenienced will stop at nothing to see that nothing is done about it.

Forget for a moment who stands to gain or lose. Just look at that curve, and the ice curves in the Arctic (and their rate of decline IS increasing). And look at all the other lines of evidence pointing in the same direction, not to mention the near-unanimity of opinion of those best qualified to know.

I don't need to believe the CO2 accumulation rate is increasing to be scared shitless about this. The fact the concentrations are rising at all I find extremely troubling. That they have been rising steadily and uninterruptedly for decades is even more troubling. And that denialists have come to the point where they are diagramming sentences and reaching for their dictionaries to come up with rebuttals convinces me they are desperate to cover this up and will stop at nothing, especially when they have been using the same tactics to attack all the other data, which for the last few years has become impossible to ignore any longer.

You know what they say about frogs in pans of slowly heated water. But frogs have an excuse.
they don't notice things that change gradually, and they don't know any better.