In a Wednesday article about the desertion charges filed against Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, The New York Times was mercilessly ridiculed on Twitter for a passage that betrayed a breathtaking ignorance about how the military works. The lack of common sense was just as startling:
Another question is whether the Army will give Sergeant Bergdahl an honorable discharge if he is found guilty of desertion. For members of the military, an honorable discharge is no small matter, and not getting one can hinder not only a veteran’s job prospects but the entirety of how a service memberlook [sic] back on his or her career.
Overnight, and without noting the edit, The Times stealth-deleted this nonsense.
Breitbart News asked a Times spokesperson how why the paragraph was removed and how something like that made it in in the first place. The only response we received was to justify the edit without noting the change:
As I mentioned last week when you inquired about another story, in the course of a 24 hour news cycle, online stories are routinely edited for space and other considerations. Most of these edits do not require a correction or editor’s note.
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