[Peace-discuss] NYT fingerprinting coverage whitewash

[Rosemary Braun]

This, from a friend of mine: he snapshotted [?!] the online NYT's 
fickle coverage of the fingerprinting story.  I know many of us 
have noticed NYT's "updates" before; here's some more evidence,
and a link to a copy of the article as it first appeared.

| From: Justin Gullingsrud <justin at ks.uiuc.edu>
| Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2002 11:57:57 -0500
| Subject: whitewash
| 
| I've about had it with the New York Times and their whitewashing of articles.
| The topic of news sites "updating" their content as stories progress has come
| up on Slashdot and other places, but I've never seen anyone mention any  
| systematic shift in editorial slant.  I first noticed this in coverage of
| the Presidential debates and ranted about it then; now I have actual
| saved pages to document the phenomenon.
| 
| Have a look at 
| http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~justin/ashcroft-v1.html and
| and
| http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~justin/ashcroft-v2.html
| 
| v1 is a snapshot as of about 6:30 last night, close to when the story was
| first posted, I think.  v2 is from today at around 11:30.  Obvious differences
| are:
| 
|  - the new version is just over half the size of the original version;
| 
|  - In the original, the first paragraph attributes to John Ashcroft the 
|    statement that the proposed regulations would affect "tens of thousands
|    of Muslim and Middle Eastern visa holders"; in the new version, the first
|    paragraph only says "foreign students, tourists, researchers and other 
|    visitors";  
| 
|  - Many noteworthy Ashcroft quotes from the original were excised from later 
|    versions;
| 
|  - The original states that "The proposal ignited a raging debate in the Bush
|    administration.  White House officials supported the Justice proposal, but
|    the State Department lodged objections..."  Absolutely no mention is made
|    of this division of opinion in later versions.
| 
|  - The original ends with some interesting background information on how the
|    proposals came to be written and who was involved; the latest version 
|    states that "reaction to the proposal was divided largely along partisan
|    lines" and quotes a Republican (Sensenbrenner) as saying that the propsal
|    is "a reasonable first step".
| 
| -- 
| 
| Justin Gullingsrud      3111 Beckman Institute
| H: (217) 384-4220       I got a million ideas that I ain't even rocked yet...
| W: (217) 244-8946       -- Mike D 
 
-- 
rosemary braun  :: theoretical biophysics, univ. illinois ::  braun at uiuc.edu
vocation www.ks.uiuc.edu/~braun :: avocation www.ks.uiuc.edu/~braun/personal