Suppose I told you that the New York Times published a piece with negative information about Jeb Bush, Mr. Bush\’s people complained about it, so The Times changed the piece in a way that was less negative/more to the Bush people\’s liking….and didn\’t bother to inform readers, either that the article had changed, or why.
Would you believe that this would happen – that The New York Times would be willing to change its article in a way that was beneficial to Mr. Bush, while making it as hard as possible for readers to know about the changes?
A little tough to do, isn\’t it?
Well, how about if it were not Jeb Bush, but Hillary Clinton? Would it be a little more believable that The Times would do so? Maybe a lot more believable?
Before you answer, please read this excerpt from Dylan Byers\’ article at politico.com. It just might give you a bit of insight into the matter:
The New York Times made small but significant changes to an exclusive report about a potential criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton\’s State Department email account late Thursday night, but provided no notification of or explanation for of the changes.
The paper initially reported that two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation “into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government information on a private email account she used as secretary of state.”
That clause, which cast Clinton as the target of the potential criminal probe, was later changed…
The Times also changed the headline of the story, from “Criminal Inquiry Sought in Hillary Clinton\’s Use of Email” to “Criminal Inquiry Is Sought in Clinton Email Account,” reflecting a similar recasting of Clinton\’s possible role.
As of early Friday morning, the Times article contained no update, notification, clarification or correction regarding the changes made to the article.
One of the reporters of the story, Michael Schmidt, explained early Friday that the Clinton campaign had complained about the story to the Times.
\’It was a response to complaints we received from the Clinton camp that we thought were reasonable, and we made them,” Schmidt said.
Yep, The Times would do that for Jeb Bush all right (feel free to wipe the sarcasm that is now dripping from your monitor).
Or, put another way, news is news — but Hillary Clinton is a Queen, and The Queen must be served.
I wonder if “All the news that\’s filtered to print” would fit in that little box on the top left corner of the first page….
