patrick.net

NewsGuard is an internet browser extension that displays green “trustworthy” or red “untrustworthy” labels next to links to news sites as its users browse the web. Because it offers a blanket rating to news websites rather than a story-by-story rating, this results in green “trustworthy” ticks sitting next to fake news stories from green-rated publications, which risks presenting users with the perception that false or inaccurate stories from green-rated publications (which include BuzzFeed, Rolling Stone, CNN and the New York Times) can be trusted.

The same is true of the recent New York Times story, where editors changed the phrasing of a headline about Herring admitting wearing blackface from “dark makeup” to “blackface” following criticism of the original headline on social media.

In a story about the murder of Mollie Tibbetts last year, the paper stealth-edited a headline to remove the word “undocumented” from a description of Tibbetts’ killer. In another case from last year, the Times stealth-edited an article about one of Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers to remove a line in which the accuser said she “could not be certain” that Kavanaugh was responsible for alleged indecent behavior.

In another infamous case, the Times made substantial edits to an article about Bernie Sanders that downplayed his legislative achievements, a decision that was ultimately critiqued by the paper’s own public editor, as well as the Poynter Institute.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/02/07/newsguard-defends-new-york-times-stealth-edit-of-blackface-story-not-all-changes-necessarily-corrections/