Diligently reading the news every day makes one perceptible for subtile changes. Often they are edits in pieces that have been published but then appear rewritten in the same place a few hours later. That seems to be a rather normal occurrence and is fair as long as the factual descriptions and their interpretation don't change.
But this one is weird.
On July 17 the New York Times published this piece by Carlotta Gall from the Ukrainian front lines:
On Donetsk’s Front Line, Small Gains and Losses Impose a Heavy Toll
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DONETSK PROVINCE, Ukraine — Red flames crackled in the golden wheat field, the target of Russian artillery just minutes earlier. Nearby, the commander of a Ukrainian frontline unit was finishing his lunch of pasta from a tin bowl. As more incoming shells exploded in the fields, his men took cover in their bunkers. …
On July 18 the New York Times published this piece by Carlotta Gall from the Ukrainian front lines:
On Donetsk’s front line, small gains and losses impose a heavy toll.
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In the grinding battle for eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Province, Russia has intensified attacks on the next line of cities that stand in their sights — Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Bakhmut, among others. …
Both pieces are linked on the current 'World' page of the NYT website. The URLs of both pieces, one published on the 17th one on the 18th of July, are different as are their opening paragraphs.
But the rest is rewritten, edited and slightly updated but content wise pretty much the same.
From the piece published on the 17th.
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Almost everyone in a volunteer unit guarding the area had suffered a concussion in recent weeks, said one soldier, Oksana, 27. She and her husband were training as criminal lawyers before the democracy protests of 2013 and joined up to fight in 2014 when Russia first annexed Crimea and Russian-backed separatists seized power in eastern Ukraine.
The unit successfully blocked a Russian attack at the end of June, said her husband, Stanislav, 35, who was commander of a forward defensive position.
“Early morning I had 33 people. By early evening I had lost 19,” he said. “It was very hard — they were firing on our positions nonstop for six hours.” Twice Russian tanks tried to flank their positions, but they spotted them and trained artillery fire on them, forcing the Russians back, he said.
And the same anecdote but published in a different piece on the 18th.
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Almost everyone in a volunteer unit guarding the area had suffered a concussion in recent weeks, said one soldier, Oksana, 27.
The unit successfully blocked a Russian attack at the end of June, said her husband, Stanislav, 35, who was commander of a forward defensive position.
“Early morning I had 33 people. By early evening I had lost 19,” he said. “It was very hard — they were firing on our positions nonstop for six hours.”
Some passages of both piece differ from each other but there is a very significant overlap of the reported anecdotes that have only been slightly rewritten.
I don't know how others feel about this but if they want me to pay for 'news', in whatever form, I want it to be news, not a rewrite of yesterday's story.
I have been reading the NYT's 'World' page for the last 20 years but have never noticed something like this. A 'new' rewrite published under the same headline a day after the original story went up? Why?
The paper may have done this for its lack of real news from the Ukraine. It seems to have only one reporter in the field. Others, like Megan Specia from London or Jane Arraf from Baghdad, have been flying in and out of Lviv or Kiev, the first being the ideological center of the Banderites in west Ukraine, delivering largely irrelevant stories. There is no NYT reporter in the Donetzk or Luhansk republics reporting on the other side of the war.
There is some real news about the Ukraine, not exactly new but still news. But it is not the stuff the NYT would like you to know about.
Maria Dubovikova @politblogme – 20:02 UTC · Jul 18, 2022
An audio recording of a conversation between Biden & Petro Poroshenko in Nov 2016 reveals that Biden demanded Poroshenko to refuse the money offered by the future Trump administration and do everything possible to close PrivatBank so that the IMF could provide a loan to Ukraine.
All of that was presented by Biden as a needed step for the sake of economic security and "physical security", apparently of Poroshenko himself. So Biden had been threatening Poroshenko.
video
The Biden family business in the Ukraine is really something some of the larger mainstream media, not just Trump affiliates, should have been digging into. It is remarkable how their ideological blinders keep them away from doing that.
By the way: Today, July 19 2022, the word 'Trump' appears nine times on the current NYT front page, 'Ukraine' appears five times.
And what about this?
Michael Tracey @mtracey – 3:10 UTC · Jul 19, 2022
Wonder if the vaunted US intelligence services have any insight into why Zelensky just sacked the equivalent of his CIA Director and Attorney General and accused them of treason.
With this peculiar development, along with the peculiar missile strike on Vinnytsia, it's safe to assume the general public is probably being told around 20% of what's really going on in Ukraine: whether regarding US policy or otherwise. So that's a roughly 1 to 5 bullshit ratio.
The Director of National Intelligence famously made the incredible statement in May that the US has less "insight" into Ukraine's operational status than Russia's. Which presumably must mean the US is just a clueless bystander with respect to these peculiar developments. Oh well.
Zelensky replaced his childhood friend Ivan Bakanov as head of the SBU with Vasily Malyuk, who is said to be a man of former president Poroshenko. Will Poroshenk be back and replace Zelenski after the now rumored of coup finally happens?
Do not expect the mainstream media to report on it.
