NPR Retracts Story 'The Man Who Spent $100K To Remove A Lie From Google'

Re:NPR Retracts Story 'The Man Who Spent $100K To Remove A L... by neolefty on Friday April 27, 2018 @02:25PM (#16943028)

> But NPR did not contact the alleged author. Upon review, NPR cannot say for certain who the author or authors were or what their motivation was. In fact, in court proceedings, the people listed as "staff editors" of the site were identified only by initials, and we have not been able to establish their identities.

It sounds like they tried to get the other side of the story and got nowhere. Makes sense given that, if the NPR story is even generally accurate, it is not in the other side's interest to corroborate it (they are accused of slander). And given that the other side is geographically pretty far away from the US, it could be hard to get anything solid.

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Re:NPR Retracts Story 'The Man Who Spent $100K To Remove A L... by vilhelm_s on Friday April 27, 2018 @03:10PM (#16943430)

If they had tried to get the other party to comment at the time of writing the original article I think that would be fair enough, but they didn't. Apparently after the story was published they were sent an email from

> someone who said he was representing the person NPR had identified as the "author" [of the purportedly slanderous website]

and then they retracted it. (https://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2018/04/12/601650762/...)

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Re:NPR Retracts Story 'The Man Who Spent $100K To Remove A L... by sjsjxhhc on Friday April 27, 2018 @02:27PM (#16943051)

If that’s all that happened, they could add “x declined to comment”.

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