If I controlled a paper, I’d force a git control system with publicly viewable edits made after publication.
Imagine the goodwill and trust that would instill in the public toward your paper.
Edit: I’ve thought the same thing about proposed legislation for a long time.
I think many have also been wondering about version control of legislation/law documents for some time as well. But I never understand why it’s not realized yet.
Because the people who would implement that system would be the same people it would hold to account.
This is useful for pointing out if a news site is manipulating a narrative, but for other things, I think news site should get the privacy they need to make stealth edits.
Like:
More recently, the Times stealth-edited an article that originally listed “death” as one of six ways “you can still cancel your federal student loan debt.” Following the edit, the “death” section title was changed to a more opaque heading of “debt won’t carry on.”
This was just poor wording. No reason sites shouldn’t have the peace of mind to change poor wording without being called out.
… What? No, if you need to edit poor wording you add a note establishing that the editor missed a section of poor wording, and that section has been revised.
You want to do stealth edits? We call those first drafts, and they arent published. Want to hide your edit history? Edit before you post.
People can make mistakes and miss things you know.
And there is nothing wrong with that, nor is there anything wrong in admitting your mistakes
This is actually a perfect example of why we need to archive these things. Don’t let corporations try to rewrite history wtf
