NY Times regularly revises its articles after publication. The revisions are substantial, undisclosed, and are nothing like real time updates in developing stories. These are regular articles that undergo dramatic changes that appear as if NY Times editors received a commissar’s call stressing the party line and demanding the article matches it exactly, with the NY Times editors dutifully obliging.
I recently stumbled on one of such revisions. Within hours, the description of Scott Pruitt, the newly appointed EPA head, in the NY Times article went from being an “ally of fossil fuel Industry,” to a “climate change dissenter,” to a “climate change denialist.” Later, I was pointed to a helpful website newsdiffs.org. Newsdiffs archives multiple versions of news articles and shows the differences between them. That article has been revised or rewritten at least six times after its original publication, all without any notice to the readers.
On the topic of climate debate, the most prominent rewrite seen is the replacement of the term “climate skeptic” with “climate denialist.“ Also witnessed, is the attempt to do some damage control, like replacing “Obama’s new climate change regulations” that reporters probably heard firsthand from government officials, with “Obama’s new clean air regulations.“
Examples, limited to the climate debate
The following article was completely re-written from its original version on January 14-15. Then, on January 18, the sentence, “Obama’s new climate change regulations are driving electric utilities to shut down coal plants,” was rewritten by replacing the term “climate change” with “clean air,” thus becoming: “Obama’s new clean air regulations are driving electric utilities to shut down coal plants“:
http://newsdiffs.org/article-history/www.nytimes.com/2016/01/15/us/politics/in-climate-move-obama-to-halt-new-coal-mining-leases-on-public-lands.html (By CORAL DAVENPORT)
Multiple changes, including changing the word Skeptics to Denialists in the title:
http://newsdiffs.org/diff/1376719/1376823/https%3A/www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/climate/scott-pruitt-epa-endangerment-finding.html (By CORAL DAVENPORT)
The article was revised 14 times:
http://newsdiffs.org/article-history/www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/us/politics/donald-trump-visit.html
(By MICHAEL D. SHEAR, JULIE HIRSCHFELD, MAGGIE HABERMAN)
Multiple changes, including in the authorship:
http://newsdiffs.org/article-history/www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/science/earth-highest-temperature-record.html (By JUSTIN GILLIS and JOHN SCHWARTZ)
For example, this link shows multiple changes to the body of the article:
The title was completely re-written:
Another title that was re-written:
http://newsdiffs.org/diff/1309853/1309964/www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/science/global-warming-daily-mail-breitbart.html (By HENRY FOUNTAIN)
Multiple substantial changes:
http://newsdiffs.org/article-history/www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/world/africa/kigali-deal-hfc-air-conditioners.html (By CORAL DAVENPORT)
At the time of this writing, some of these articles are different from their last versions in newsdiffs, and at least one seems similar to the initial version in newsdiffs. Probably newsdiffs monitors the news articles only for short time. Also, NY Times’ website may send different versions of the same article to different readers.
As if we needed this to know that The Times crossed over from news to outright propaganda years ago.
If we want to examine the etiology of this broad media phenomenon start with college journalism schools of the 60’s. Prior to campus radicalism of that era most students went into journalism for the noble purpose of “reporting the news so that we would have an informed society and electorate”. With the new activism of the 60’s, journalism schools effectively began to select impressionable leftist students who “wanted to change the world”, and the era of modern leftist propaganda was launched as an institution an America.
Ironically the modern college campus is now acknowledged as the most censored and hostile place in the country toward political free speech. The P.C. people who parade around with TOLERANCE, COEXIST, and DIVERSITY posters are the exact opposite. And campus journalism and media schools are at the very center of this campus movement, leading the charge with propaganda and leftist political agendas.
This is the same liberal news rag that employed the infamous leftists propegandists Walter Duranty and Herb Mathews who covered up the crimes commited by Stalin and Castro the New York Slimes and ALL THE SLUDGE THAT’S FIT TO PRINT and still pretty much americas version of the russian leftists propeganda paper PRAVDA