As Twitchy mentioned earlier, the New York Times ran a hit “tweet” against Elon Musk Thursday. We say tweet because the tweet was worded to sound like Musk was some sort of apartheid supporter growing up, but the piece itself showed just the opposite.
Elon Musk grew up in elite white communities in South Africa, detached from apartheid’s atrocities and surrounded by anti-Black propaganda.
He sees his takeover of Twitter as a free speech win but in his youth did not suffer the effects of misinformation. https://t.co/bciCJDWGGP
— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 5, 2022
That’s the way the tweet reads now. Originally the Times suggested that as he was growing up Musk saw “the dangers of unchecked speech.”
Ah yes… unchecked speech pic.twitter.com/q6L95eQMzp
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) May 5, 2022
John Eligon is the Times’ Johannesburg bureau chief:
So you think the article paints Elon as bad? Or is this a clear example of you deciding beforehand that it would paint him as bad but then reading it and realizing that maybe that’s not what it does, but for your Twitter rep you can’t come out and say that?
— John Eligon (@jeligon) May 5, 2022
No, I read the whole article before commenting on your tweet and I found the framing very strange. The entire top of the piece is designed to call his politics/upbringing into question but there's fundamentally no there there.
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) May 5, 2022
I didn't say the whole article paints him as bad — I speculated that your starting point was that he is suspect and that that slant is reflected in how you approached and excuted the article, and what you put where
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) May 5, 2022
This was almost an hour ago. Stealth editing in the paper of record is REALLY bad for journalism. Clearly you or your coauthor or editor(s) thought something was wrong with the initial phrasing — you should really add an explanation.https://t.co/k3R86Yqpju
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) May 5, 2022
Some editing going on this afternoon https://t.co/3kQSgPW0Y5 pic.twitter.com/SGFQLNJIO9
— Tom Gara (@tomgara) May 5, 2022
We guess “In Musk’s past” suggests that Musk was somehow involved with the misinformation.
For someone who is always critiquing journalism you sure don’t know what a correction is.
— John Eligon (@jeligon) May 5, 2022
John's a bureau chief at the New York Times and it would be very useful for him to provide a yes/no answer to the question of whether it's okay to make significant stealth edits to a live article without noting the changes in question, which is what happened here. https://t.co/08NqJe2smf
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) May 5, 2022
The correction only includes "Due to an editing error, a photo caption with an earlier version of this story misspelled the name of the son of Stanley Netshituka, the first Black student at Pretoria Boys High School. The son’s name is Masase, not Masas."
— Will Tjernlund (@WTjern) May 5, 2022
Why is there an editors note for a small misspelling of a name but not one for entire new sentences that change the tone of the article?
— Vineet (@vineetee) May 5, 2022
— Vineet (@vineetee) May 5, 2022
Doesn’t it deserve an explanation? That doesn’t seem like an unreasonably high bar for the paper of record.
— Occam's Bulldog (@occamsbulldog) May 5, 2022
Corrections are generally noted in the article. Stealth edits are shady.
— Travis (@GreatBelin) May 5, 2022
It should be astonishing seeing blue tick NYT staff replying to evidence of stealth edits as a snarky teenager. But it really isn't. It's been clear for some time that NYT, along with most pubs, has been captured by ppl happy to sacrifice even basic standards to ideological zeal.
— rutheday99 (@rutheday99) May 5, 2022
Stealth edits are not corrections.
— Evan Hoffman (@EvanHoffman) May 5, 2022
But you didn't list the correction
— 🇺🇦 Я з Україною 🇪🇺 (@PurpleHatKid) May 5, 2022
That's not a correction, it's a re-write after negative feedback. Come on.
— Bill (@BillyEs13) May 5, 2022
oh yeah, what's the big deal, it's only stealth edits in the PAPER OF RECORD
— Rahul Sridhar 🍦 (@fortenforge) May 5, 2022
Do YOU know what a correction is?
— Justin Riley (@11RileyJ) May 5, 2022
This is most definitely not a correction. Corrections are called out specifically stating what the error was and what the correction is.
— Thorstein Veblen (@GoodsVeblen) May 5, 2022
Well it’s tough to keep up considering the apparently expanding definition which now encompasses “full title and sub rewrite”
— thesurfersgirl (@thesurfersgirl) May 5, 2022
Wow. This is embarrassing. The paper I’ve read daily for over 20 years is becoming totally unrecognizable
“Journalistic standards be damned, we’ve got a narrative to peddle. Oh no, people noticed? Quick, change it. This is a *totally normal* editorial technique. Moral Clarity!”
— Gary (@ultravires1776) May 5, 2022
What a snobbish reply. You know full well that the propriety of stealth editing is constantly being debated.
— Gregory Conley (@GregTHR) May 5, 2022
You lost this one, John. It's a crappy piece, with obvious crappy intentions. That it fails to succeed in selling what it's insinuating isn't to its credit.
"Paper of record."
Jeez.
— Levant Johnson (@JohnsonLevant) May 5, 2022
No one at the New York Times has earned the right to be snarky.
Related:
NYT’s own reporting torpedoes the entire premise of their hit piece sliming Elon Musk as pro-apartheid racist https://t.co/LtOllGw9Mt
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) May 5, 2022
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