New York Times drawing heat for revising stories again
The New York Times is once again drawing heat for revising stories to appease critics.
In the latest snafu, the Gray Lady amended a story on the Tea Party after insiders and readers blasted it for being too easy on the political group, including its history of racism.
Jeremy Peters’ Aug. 28 story on the 10-year anniversary of the movement was headlined, “The Tea Party Didn’t Get What It Wanted, But It Did Unleash the Politics of Anger.”
It unleashed anger all right.
NYT columnist Paul Krugman fired a salvo on Twitterat his own paper as soon as the original hit on Wednesday. “Oh, God. Are we still pretending that the Tea Party was about small government and concern about budget deficits? It was always, from the beginning, about racial anger; opposition to big government only to the extent that it helps Those People.”
Dave Levitan, author of “Not a Scientist: How Politicians Mistake, Misrepresent and Utterly Mangle Science,” was also angered by the original version.
“I know the Times doesn’t like to call anything racist, but jfc this look back at the Tea Party goes to some ABSURD lengths to avoid the obvious fact that they just didn’t like the black guy in office!” he tweeted.
The paper quickly amended the story to note that many Tea Party supporters would wave signs “with racist caricatures and references” and said that many of the early supporters were simply against the “first black president.”
NYT political editor Patrick Healy gave a lengthy retort on the changes, saying it was initially framed as a story about national spending.
“After publishing, we heard from readers who made the point that in a story about the Tea Party and history, race and racism within the Tea Party movement needed to be addressed. While our story was chiefly about deficits and spending, we decided to add context about the Tea Party attacks on President Obama and the racist displays at some Tea Party rallies. We updated the story and sent out a tweet about that update,” Healy said.
The changes also triggered backlash from people who fretted that public criticisms keep causing Times editors to buckle.
“Repeatedly letting itself get bullied into changing its coverage for the left is not a good look for the NYT,” tweeted Mark Hemingway, a senior writer at RealClearInvestigations.
The paper recently faced heat for changing a front page headline that read “Trump Urges Unity Vs. Racism,” in response to the president’s national address over mass shootings. The new headline read: “Assailing Hate But Not Guns.”
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