As bloggers continue to examine alleged instances of post-publication editing by Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell, they appear to have uncovered additional instances where Mitchell may have altered previosuly published work. Blogger Allah Pundit, posting at Hot Air felt that two paragraphs were added after publication to a recent Mitchell piece.
I will swear to you on a stack of Bibles that those two paragraphs weren’t there when the article first went online. I wrote a whole post about it; I read it through several times, specifically looking for instances of Mitchell taking disingenuous shots at bloggers. There were none. It was just a compendium of quotes from the Lightstalkers thread. Today, after reading CY’s post accusing him (or someone) of rewriting that old column, I checked the two about war photographers. And there were the paragraphs about Zombie that I don’t remember reading.
Additional research ultimately posted on my home blog supports the notion that Mitchell significantly edited and augmented his piece post-publication. The two paragraphs below don't appear to have been part of Mitchell's original post.
Since my first column, the same blogs are in a tizzy over the "Zombietime" site proving that the July 23 incident, in which two Red Cross ambulances were hit from the air by the Israelis, never happened. Needless to say, there is no such proof, and my favorite line comes near the end when the writer observes "Israel already admitted to carrying out the attack," adding dryly that this is "an interesting point."
Does this stop her? Alas, no. She goes on to assert that "all signs" point to a "clumsy hoax," complete with ambulances towed from a junk yard and "Red Cross workers feigning minor injuries." Perhaps the Israeli missiles were fired from the Grassy Knoll.
In this instance it is possible that Mitchell altered his content to both malign a blogger and make a claim potentially less subject to challenge as it was advanced after the fact.
Earlier it was discovered that Mitchell appears to have altered the lede in a three-year-old post to make himself look less accountable for an acknowledged ethical lapse very early in his journalism career. He altered the story lede to emphasize his age and lack of experience at the time.
It should also be noted that, putting aside the late alteration, that particular piece might be seriously flawed as it appears to have reported the temporary closing down of the Niagra Falls as having taken place two years before it actually did.
Scroll for update at the lgf blog for that report.
