Speaking of the San Jose rag deliberately withholding information from its readers — or “marks,” I believe they say in the confidence business — Sexton had a sorta-overlooked piece last night, The NY Times’ Shifting Standards on Mixing Murder and Politics.
The catch here is that the New York Times, having spent days claiming Lougher was inspired by Palin, deleted its previous claims, without noting their correction/retraction.
They’re just eliminating their mistakes from the record– according to the New York Times, as it stands today, they had it right from the start. They have nothing to correct and nothing to apologize for because, as their Orwellian edits will tell you, they were always right.
The only sort of accountability a media organization has is the pain in confessing an error. That’s the only thing that restrains them. The loss of credibility and the ego-abrading sting of apology.
And the New York Times has now decided to liberate itself from that small burden.
And why bother making sure you get it right the first time when the Magic Delete Button can go back in time to fix your mistakes a month later?
Henceforth, they’ll simply dial up MiniTruth and ask Historical Compliance Agent G3312 to make the required changes in the record to make the past agree with the present’s political needs.