
New York Times silently edits its "lost all credibility" line - slapshot
http://www.newsdiffs.org/diff/245566/245668/www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/opinion/president-obamas-dragnet.html
======
blinkingled
They just added "on this issue" to it. Doesn't seem to be a big deal - they
are just making bit more explicit what was already implied. It would be
different if they had removed the line completely or changed their stance 180
degree.

~~~
PavlovsCat
Yes. Looking over the changes, I honestly only see attempts at making it more
explicit.

Which in itself could mean they were initially _eager_ to release it (instead
of letting it rot on a shelf or something), and/or that it was written with a
hot pen, if you know what I mean. "Lost all credibility" [on everything ever]
is something I might say, but it's not something I would expect to read in a
decent newspaper. Someone got a bit emotional over this and I salute them for
that; that they later decided to be a bit more smart and effective about it
doesn't take anything away, it just adds to it.

edit/addendum: Just consider what it would literally mean, he lost crediblity
on everything; a feast for any and all republicans, for starters. I mean, does
this mean gay marriage was a mistake, too? Some would happily use this as
water on their mills with unrelated issues.

~~~
randallsquared
I think it's really weird to say that someone has lost all credibility _on
this issue_. I mean, credibility is something that applies to people and
entities, not to issues.

~~~
shardling
Read more carefully -- they're talking about the administration, not the
person.

There's no reason that this diminishes their credibility on, say, health care
reform. It's a totally different set of people, and a fundamentally different
agenda.

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ceejayoz
What a phenomenal idea for a site.

~~~
fletchowns
Agreed, I hadn't seen it before I saw this entry on HN. Really awesome idea
for a site.

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vosper
I'm so happy that newsdiffs exists! I had come up with the same idea (and
name) independently after noticing substantial edits to articles on a major NZ
news website, but never got around to creating the tool. I'm excited to check
out their github repo and see if I can setup tracking for the sites I'm
interested in.

~~~
toyg
I've toyed with that idea ever since WinerWatcher [1] , even started a repo or
two, but nobody in my circle of friends seemed to believe in it, so I dropped
it. More or less like it happened with any personal project I've ever started
since 1999...

[1] [http://brian.carnell.com/articles/2003/mark-pilgrims-
winer-w...](http://brian.carnell.com/articles/2003/mark-pilgrims-winer-
watcher/)

~~~
leephillips
That'a a blast from the past. WinerWatcher was awesome, and its subject's
reaction to it damnably revealing.

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tod222
One reason for this edit may be that Drudge's link to the story reads "NYT: He
has lost all credibility..."

This is just below a link reading "Fournier: Obama's Police State..."

[Note, I support everyone highlighting this issue, even Drudge. There's been
far too little concern with the fear of terrorism being used to justify the
erosion of our civil liberties, first by Republicans under Bush, and now by
Democrats under Obama.]

------
SGCleveland
I'm sure the editorial board's original intent was to say that Obama had lost
all credibility on this particular topic. They were simply clarifying. Losing
all credibility isn't really true in other contexts.

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KNoureen
Question: Isn't Newsdiffs setting themselves up for a lawsuit by re-printing
the article?

~~~
PavlovsCat
I think that is unlikely:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/opinion/sunday/article-
ch...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/opinion/sunday/article-changes-are-
shown-in-a-tool-created-by-outsiders.html?_r=1)

~~~
intropic
Nice find, great article on Newsdiffs, In the Times.

~~~
PavlovsCat
I wish I could take that much credit, but I simply saw the link here:
<http://www.newsdiffs.org/>

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waterlesscloud
They're professional writers, they knew what they wrote and how people would
read it.

This is just the plausible deniability phase.

~~~
anigbrowl
Being a professional writer doesn't mean that your first draft is always
perfect. News writers in particular are operating under deadlines; the whole
reason that editors exist is to deal with the inevitable flaws that creep into
writing.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Sorry, I just don't believe a line like that goes out unknowingly. It's the
obvious pull quote from the whole thing, not a minor sentence that no one
noticed.

~~~
anigbrowl
And if I was an editor, I'd dial it back a notch too because it reads more as
polemic than principle. Administering the executive branch of the USG is a
huge and diverse task; To suggest that the administration had lost all
credibility, on any topic, in the light of this news seems laughably
overstated to me.

Personally, I'm much more interested in the implications of this for the
legislative branch, which has had a pattern of abdicating its responsibility
on these issues to the executive for the last decade. (The most obvious
example, for context, is the AUMF of 2001 which basically gives the EB a a
blank check while eschewing any meaningful oversight role.)

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asolove
If they're going to edit, they really need to add a comma in this sentence:

"That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the
heat of fear after the 9/11 attacks by members of Congress ..."

~~~
betawolf33
Also, I don't get why they replaced 'This stunning use of the act' with
'Stunning use of the act'. The new line doesn't make sense, who called for
that edit?

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jryan49
I'm guessing because of this front page Fox News article:
[http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/06/new-york-times-
ed...](http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/06/new-york-times-editorial-
board-says-administration-has-lost-all-credibility/)

