There’s a kerfuffle going on with an NYTimes article about Trump and Xi. Trump calls the article fake news, saying it doesn’t describe his phone call on Thursday with Xi. But the online article starts with that phone call! What’s going on?

The confusion is the print edition of the article does not include the call. You can see that in this screenshot of the front page I took from Newseum. The article was then later updated online to include more facts, including the call.

The current online article is excellent reporting and, I think, accurate. The print edition was probably also accurate at the time it was published; it seems likely the NYTimes had not yet been informed of the Xi call. The problem is the edit to the online article isn’t disclosed to readers. And so everyone’s left confused, including journalists. One of the article authors even retweeted a smug tweet from another NYT reporter mocking Trump’s reading comprehension. But it seems likely to me Trump simply read the older print article.

One of Trump’s weapons is creating distrust for the media. It’s important for newspapers of record to do everything they can to avoid confusion. The NYT really needs a policy of disclosing edits to online articles.