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June 14, 2003

9/11 Exploitation and NYT headline changes

Atrios at Eschaton posted the following entry earlier today:

I´ll have much more to say about this at a later date, but the page B3 headline in the New York Times (in the print edition, not online, according to reader de) which says "GOAL IS TO LAY CORNERSTONE AT GROUND ZERO DURING G.O.P. CONVENTION" makes me want to puke.

This is sick, and we have to do something about it.

-Atrios, 5:11 AM

In his comment section, a couple visitors noted:

I think the article you're referring to was online here, but it seems to have been stripped of its original references to the Republican convention.

Dan | 06.14.03 - 8:38 am

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Actually, it was - when I linked to it, the headline put in place was the "GOAL TO..." headline that specifically referenced the GOP convention. What bullshit.

jesse | 06.14.03 - 8:58 am

I was curious to see if anyone else was running the headline about the GOP, and ran a Google News search on it. Interestingly, the Google entry that links to the NYT story actually still showed the headline stating that the goal is to get the cornerstone for the new WTC project laid during the GOP connection, but when I clicked through on the link, I get the article with its current headlines stating that there are hopes for a speedy environmental approval for the project. I decided to take screenshots so you could see it for yourselves. On both pages, you will be able to see the URL, so you can verify that they match.

The first image is of the Google search results page [link opens in a new page]. The original headline of the story is displayed in red, and I have my mouse hovering over the text so that the URL it links to is shown in the status bar at the bottom of the image.

The second is of the NYT article as it stands right now. You can see the URL in the address bar, and can verify that it is the same as the one showing in the status bar from the first image.

[Note: in IE6, the images display so that they "fit into the window", rather than at the actual size of the image. If you hover your mouse over the image for a moment, in the lower right hand corner, you will get a button that has an orange square surrounded by blue arrows on it. Click on this button, and the image will expand to it's full dimensions and you'll be able to read everything, including the URLs, clearly]

I'm very curious about how and when that headline was changed, but in all honesty, while it may seem like that the main focus of this post, it's not. I can't say I'm surprised that this administration would try to pull a stunt like having the WTC rebuilding cornerstone laid during their convention - I just find myself more and more worried about exactly how low it is that they will go.

It's already been made clear that the Republicans are planning to milk 9/11 and what will be the 3rd anniversary of the attacks for all their worth during their campaign to get Bush re-elected in 2004. Hopefully, Democrats will be able to effectively point out how the Republicans have no shame whatsoever, and that they're willing to use the tragic deaths of 3,000 people for political purposes.

UPDATE: I've also located (thanks to Bob Harris at Tom Tomorrow's This Modern World) a Google cache of the index page for the New York Times "Regional News" page, showing the "GOP/cornerstone" headline. If for any reason that's not working, I have a screen capture you can view.

UPDATE #2: Bob Harris, posting at Tom Tomorrow's "This Modern World" had also posted about it and asked if anyone had screenshots or scans that would help show what happened. Mike from Hoboken was able to get a scan of not only the headline itself from the print edition of the paper, but a scan that shows - clearly and readably - the entire text of the article, making it easy to compare the original print version to the altered internet version. Bob posted a link to Mike's scan at his Yahoo Briefcase, but I've had a great deal of difficulty with getting images at Yahoo to load reliably, so I've pulled a copy of it and posted it here to make it easier to access.

Posted by thorswitch at June 14, 2003 07:28 AM

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Comments

Posted by: Hozee at June 14, 2003 10:07 AM

Posted by: kriselda jarnsaxa at June 14, 2003 10:28 AM

Posted by: Kim at June 16, 2003 03:56 PM