New York Times Deletes Paragraph in Article on Plume Affair

[protect freedom impeach bush now]

http://www.thememoryhole.org/media/nyt-hard-to-define.htm

On 01 October 2003, the New York Times published the article "White House Besieged With Questions Over Leaking of Name" by David Stout. A couple of bloggers, including Atrios, immediately pointed out this astoundingly asinine paragraph regarding the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's name by senior Bush Administration officials:


The scandal over the leak is hard to define in one or two sentences. It does not seem to involve issues of constitutional gravity, like Watergate or the Iran-contra affair, or at least not directly. It does not have to do with greed. Nor does it seem to involve matters of national security.


- -

Soon, that boneheaded paragraph was completely gone, with no indication that the article had been changed.

Google News provides proof-positive that these words were originally in the article, as this screenshot of a search shows:





mirror of google search
http://www.thememoryhole.org/media/google-nyt-hard-define.htm

[burr]

1. How professional...

thank god for the patriotic unbiased, superliberal, truthseeking press. :puffpiece:

[NewYorkerfromMass]

2. Did the editors remove the paragraph?

Yes? Then I'd say they did their jobs. This was the website BTW, not print.

[Cha]

3. What do you expect from "the new whore times"?

[NewYorkerfromMass]

6. It was an irresponsible paragraph and the editors removed it

and rightly so. Why would anyone attack the editors for doing their jobs? The reporter went beyond reporting and began to editorialize and he got shot down. We should be happy. :shrug:

[Cocoa]

9. retractions are always better

There's something not quite kosher about scrubbing, imo.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

10. Retractions are for when it makes it to PRINT

this never even got that far. I would equate this to a deleted thread here. It had a very short life in cyberspace. And the reporter probably caught hell.

[Brian Sweat]

4. Exposing covert agents and tracking WMD

aren't matters of national security.

Who knew?

[NewYorkerfromMass]

5. For the curious, it appeared at the end of the story.

"....For instance, Mr. McClellan opened his early-afternoon briefing by noting that Mr. Bush was about to sign an appropriations bill in a ceremony at the Department of Homeland Security, just one more step in "the global war on terrorism." But the announcement was virtually ignored.<bold was re-written>

The scandal over the leak is hard to define in one or two sentences. It does not seem to involve issues of constitutional gravity, like Watergate or the Iran-contra affair, or at least not directly. It does not have to do with greed. Nor does it seem to involve matters of national security.

In his column today, in fact, Mr. Novak said he learned of Ms. Plame's role through an "offhand revelation" rather than an orchestrated leak, that he had never....
<now reads>
For his part, Mr. Novak asserted in his column today that he had learned of Ms. Plame's role....

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&edition=us&q=%22The+scandal+over+the+leak+is+hard+to+define%22&btnG=Search+News

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&q=%22Nor+does+it+seem+to+involve+matters+of+national+security%22&btnG=Search+News

[FlaGranny]

8. It seems to me if Novak

had just heard this information almost "accidentally" it makes him even more guilty for publishing her name. Novak has been around a long time; he should know what it means to name agents. Unbelievably, he's still trying to cover for the leakers, trying to minimize and make light of what they did.

[Snellius]

7. It sounds more like a memo not journalism

I've never heard any hard news story with a sentence like "The scandal over the leak is hard to define in one or two sentences." The whole point of journalism is to define things "in one or two sentences." It's like saying "This story is really complicated and I don't really know what's going on but I'll write something anyway."