"If You Tell the Truth, You Don't Have to Remember Anything"

Mark Twain said that.  In politics, it's sometimes hard to find folks who understand the value of truth.
Take the campaign of the flying Dutchman of politics, William Weld, as reported in the New York Times story below.

February 4, 2025
Aides Re-edited News Articles on Candidate's Web Site

By PATRICK D. HEALY
As William F. Weld runs for governor of New York this year, his campaign has put a new spin on the old political rule of having a positive message.

I love political stories that start like this: establishing cred by quoting some "old political rule" that really isn't a rule at all, like, say, the importance of getting more votes or in this case, "having a positive (as opposed to negative?) message.  Beware of false prophesies.

Campaign aides have significantly altered two newspaper articles on his Web site about his bid for governor, removing all negative phrases about him, like "mini-slump" and "dogged by an investigation," and passages about his political problems.

You see, this is why you need actual newspapers and real reporters, as opposed to getting all your news from Wikipedia. It takes a journalist to find colorful words like "mini-slump" and "dogged" to put in embarassing public places, like the front pages of newspapers.

Also removed were references to a federal investigation of Decker College, a Kentucky trade school that Mr. Weld led until he left to run for governor last fall; the college collapsed into bankruptcy weeks later amid allegations of financial aid fraud. And criticism of Mr. Weld by a former New York Republican senator, Alfonse D'Amato, was removed.

Unlike much of what I write about here, this is a subject I know quite a bit about.  I've reprinted news articles countless times in the direct mail packages I've created for national, state and local campaigns.  I've highlighted the good parts of a clip, pulled out quotes and of course, made fair use of our friend the ellipses.  But this, as the WASPs say, is just not done.  How rude!

The Weld campaign placed the sanitized articles, still under the reporters' bylines, on its Web site, weldfornewyork.org under the heading "news." Nothing told readers about the changes.

Lively newspaper writing, you can't beat it.  "Sanitized articles."  Then the voice of doom sentence, as ominous as those four notes from Beethoven. "Nothing told readers about the changes." 

But wait, there's more.

It is generally considered inappropriate for a political campaign to alter news articles or photos and then render them as the true content. "It's totally dishonest" said George Arzt, a New York political communications consultant who worked for Eliot Spitzer, now the leading Democratic candidate for governor, in 1998. "I've never heard of such a thing done by a major player in a gubernatorial race."

But a Weld spokesman defended the practice, comparing it to selecting positive blurbs to run in movie advertisements.

"Inappropriate?"  I'll say.  Like a movie blurb?  What do you want to bet that the Weld spokesman speaking here spake before for a commercial, not political boss and will not speak tomorrow? 

      Continue reading the Times article below, and come back later for more truth-avoiding from NASA. 

One of the articles is from The New York Times of Jan. 21, and the other, by a Gannett News Service writer, ran in The Poughkeepsie Journal on Jan. 25.

In its revision of the Times article, the Weld campaign lopped off the first three paragraphs, which reviewed Mr. Weld's problems. The Weld version carried the reporter's byline but dropped the story headline, "Campaign May Be Down, But Weld Certainly Isn't," and began with a first paragraph (originally the fourth) about Mr. Weld being known in Massachusetts as "a man who never had a bad day."

The changes, which were discovered by a reporter, were made at a time when Mr. Weld, a former governor of Massachusetts, is trying to establish himself as the leading Republican candidate for governor. He is ahead of his three rivals in fund-raising and influential Republican leaders have endorsed him.

Reached on his cellphone yesterday, Mr. Weld said that he was going into a meeting, and that he was unaware of the editing of articles on his Web site and would seek information from his staff. One Weld aide reacted with surprise when notified about the changes. Soon after, the words "excerpted version" appeared on the Web site above the two articles.

Dominick Ianno, a spokesman for Mr. Weld, later defended the revised news stories. He said no words were replaced or inserted, and that it was normal in publicity material to highlight flattering passages from news stories and leave out criticism.

"We don't think using excerpts is uncommon — it's regularly in advertising, movie reviews, book reviews, and other promotional materials," Mr. Ianno said. "That said, for the two articles, we have added the words 'excerpted versions' on the Web site."

Mr. Ianno said it was fair to use the word "excerpt" to describe the 800-word version of the original 1,500-word Times article. He also asserted that "every other candidate is doing the same thing," but added that he and the Weld campaign had not had time to make such a review.

A review of the news sections on the Web sites of John Faso, a Republican rival to Mr. Weld, and of Mr. Spitzer did not produce signs of the same sort of revisions.

On Mr. Spitzer's site, most of the items were press releases. Some items did appear to be news articles, but the imprimatur of the authors and publications had been removed. In the one case where a news article, an Associated Press dispatch from Jan. 19, was clearly identified on the Web site, the campaign version appeared identical to the version found in the Nexis news archive. Both versions also included negative references to Mr. Spitzer, who is the state attorney general, allegedly threatening critics of his.

Told of the editing on Mr. Weld's Web site yesterday, a spokesman for the New York Democratic Party, Howard Wolfson, said, "Bill Weld may be able to edit these stories, but he can't change reality." After noticing the revised stories, The Times reviewed more than 20 other news articles and editorials on the Weld site since October, and compared them to the original versions. Stories that were wholly positive about Mr. Weld were included in full; some others were compressed, but had buttons to guide readers to the full articles.

A link was not provided to the Times article, Mr. Ianno said, because it had been removed from public access and was available only to Times subscribers. Yet the Weld site linked to full stories in the New York Sun that were also only available to subscribers.

Mr. Ianno said he did not know why there was no link to the Poughkeepsie Journal.

Politicians and campaigns usually avoid altering news stories and photographs. A Democratic candidate for mayor of New York last year, C. Virginia Fields, never recovered her political and fund-raising momentum after a controversy over a photo on a campaign flier that was altered to add two Asian-Americans in a crowd of supporters. And editorial pages regularly criticize politicians when they use flattering news passages out of context in fliers or letters to donors.

The two revised articles show that the Weld campaign focused on removing negative assessments of Mr. Weld's fund-raising, momentum and record of leadership.

Among the deletions were words and phrases like "setbacks," "mini-slump," "getting back on track," and "raising money has been a challenge."

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company