New York Times Changes January Headline to Remove Mention of Wiretapping | Hacker News Reader

New York Times Changes January Headline to Remove Mention of Wiretapping

mwilliams.info

29 pointsmbgaxyz11 comments

This is just the print headline and the online headline not matching. That's normal, because the print headline has tight space constraints. Newspaper headlines are rewritten during page makeup.

The New York Times' own image of their own front page says "Wiretapping".[1] On the same page, there is the story "Trump Arrives, Set to Assume Power". The online version of that story has the longer title "Trump Nominees Make Clear Plans to Sweep Away Obama Policies"[2] Stories may also be cut for length in the print edition, but not online.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/images/2017/01/20/nytfrontpage/scan.p... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/us/politics/trump-cabinet...

The title seems to suggest something nefarious, but it instead it ultimately amounts to a non-issue.

I run into this formula once a day it seems. Yesterday it was a pink tap water article.

It will depend from which sources you get your information. Maybe the legwork will be done by someone sufficiently motivated to definitively prove one way or another, but I wouldn't really consider this a closed case. I'm shocked if anyone alive in 2017 really thinks this is something the media would never do.

http://newsdiffs.org/article-history/www.nytimes.com/2017/01...

That's useful. It shows minor changes being made during the first 9 hours after the article appeared on line. The title changed from "Inquiry on Aides To Trump Studies Wiretapped Data" to "Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry Of Trump Aides" two hours after the first posting. That's an editor at work.

Yea, I never knew these news diffing sites existed. Looks like "Wiretapped" was indeed removed at some point in time, which seems to contradict the description given in the redaction/apology article. But this tool doesn't give any insight as to when that change occurred since its final snapshot was only a day after the original article was posted.

> However, according to the Wayback Machine, the online version of the story has had a different headline since it was first posted

So... you're saying they didn't change it?

It's common for NYT articles to have different titles in different places; if you go to the homepage and click one of the headlines, the article title will generally be different from the headline. This makes some sense, since there's more space on the article page and it's less important to summarize the entire article when the full text is right below.

For context, Trump fans are alleging some kind of media coverup of the fact that wiretaps recorded certain Trump associates, which supposedly conflicts with denials of Trump's claim that Obama had ordered him or Trump Tower to be wiretapped. It does not; the main difference is between wiretaps recording X and wiretaps targeting X, as apparently at least some of the wiretaps were targeted at the Russian ambassador himself (and happened to record, e.g., Flynn). I also haven't seen reports that Trump himself was recorded in such a way, though for all I know it's possible.

It's not unusual for newspapers to fiddle with headlines. This one was modified around the time it was published. https://web.archive.org/web/20170120230201/https://www.nytim... (way before Trump's new allegations). Perfect example of fake news....

This is the ultimate non-story, the NYT often edits its headlines several times an hour, after publishing or whenever they feel like it.

Check this twitter account for a constant running feed of this: https://twitter.com/nyt_diff

That's a cool twitterbot! Thanks for the link.

> Editor’s Note: The following piece is based on an error. The Times did not in fact change the headline of a January 19 article after its publication as was alleged. Andrew C. McCarthy acknowledges and explains the error in this post. The text of his column as originally published remains below for reference. We regret the error and apologize to our readers.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/445628/barack-obama-do...

National Review article on this: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/445628/barack-obama-do...

That article has been updated to note that it was incorrect, and links to another National Review article going into further depth on their mistake and apologizing: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/445649/mccarthy-error-a...

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