The claim
For time-sensitive and evolving topics, more recent, updated content tends to be favoured, making content maintenance a genuine ranking lever.
What the evidence shows
Google has long acknowledged that freshness can be a relevance signal for queries deserving freshness, and industry analyses consistently observe ranking gains after substantive content updates on decaying pages. Freshness is contextual - evergreen topics gain little from date changes - and superficial date edits without substantive improvement do not help.