NY Times Public Editor Chastises Paper for Stealth-Editing Bernie Sanders Piece

[UglyGreed]

The New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan took her paper to task Thursday after a piece about Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was updated to add negative paragraphs for seemingly no reason at all.

The original Times article “Bernie Sanders Scored Victories for Years via Legislative Side Doors,” was a generally positive piece about how Sanders managed to score legislative victories in Congress despite being an independent. But after publication, the following two paragraphs were added without any indication from the Times that the piece had been updated.

But in his presidential campaign Mr. Sanders is trying to scale up those kinds of proposals as a national agenda, and there is little to draw from his small-ball legislative approach to suggest that he could succeed.

Mr. Sanders is suddenly promising not just a few stars here and there, but the moon and a good part of the sun, from free college tuition paid for with giant tax hikes to a huge increase in government health care, which has made even liberal Democrats skeptical.

Writing on her blog, Sullivan agreed with the Times‘ critics that adding those paragraphs clearly turned the piece from a positive story about Sanders to a negative one. “The changes to this story were so substantive that a reader who saw the piece when it first went up might come away with a very different sense of Mr. Sanders’s legislative accomplishments than one who saw it hours later,” she argued.

http://www.mediaite.com/print/ny-times-public-editor-chastises-paper-for-stealth-editing-bernie-sanders-piece/

[truedelphi]

1. This demonstrates once and for all the thinking of the Powers that Be --

Every poll out there shows that inside a Trump vs. Sanders Presidential contest, Sanders would win.

But that would be anathema to the Powers that Be.

It is totally important to them to have the contest be between Hillary and The Donald. (With Hillary probably ending up losing.)

That way, whatever happens, there will be a continuation of the endless wars, the Big Insurer/Big Pharma sellouts and the Big Banking Uber Alles way of life.

Of course, under Trump, the Mainstream Banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America would suffer, but the Bank of Trump would do spectacularly.

[RufusTFirefly]

2. Alas, the damage is done.

It's like illegally rounding up convention protesters and keeping them detained until the process is over. Even if law enforcement belatedly admits guilt and even pays a fine (further eroding public services), it's too late.

The Times is great at this -- rah-rahing the buildup to the Iraq War and then admitting, long after the genie is out of the bottle, that it made a mistake. Oops! Sorry about all the dead people!

[jomin41]

3. Yeah, but it's too late now, isn't it?