All the news that's fit to print - with a 40% discount for errors.

From New York Times forced to heavily amend another supposed K.T. McFarland 'scoop' by Becket Adams. Mainstream media news article has to be corrected and rewritten multiple times owing to inaccurate and biased reporting is not a particularly uncommon circumstance. In fact, it is kind of standard fair.

Adams, though, introduces a resource with which I was unfamiliar, Newsdiffs.org which tracks changes in articles subsequent to publication in the New York Times, BBC, Washington Post, CNN and Politico. He includes in his article an example of the kind of mark-up Newsdiffs generates.

In this particular instance, the NYT had to substantially rewrite an article owing to errors of fact and errors of interpretation. The article morphs from a pretty direct accusation of deliberate wrong-doing on the part of a K.T. McFarland to an eventual position that her opponents think she might possibly have been less than accurate. No actual evidence of wrong-doing even though that was the lead.

Here is the markup of the article over its brief, painful life.

Click to enlarge.

By my very rough ballpark estimate that is 21 redlined sentences and 32 greenlined. So, very roughly, 40% (21/53) of the article had to be rewritten in order to address inaccuracies.

Sounds like someone needs to talk about six-sigma with the Times. Need a little more quality control.