FORMER NYT EDITOR ACKNOWLEDGES SOURCING ERRORS

The former executive editor of The New York Times acknowledged Thursday that her new book, “Merchants of Truth,” contains some sourcing errors and said she would correct them.

In an email sent Thursday to The Associated Press, Jill Abramson wrote that some page numbers in sourcing notes needed to be fixed and some sources “should have been cited as quotations in the text.”

“The notes don’t match up with the right pages in a few cases, and this was unintentional and will be promptly corrected. The language is too close in some cases and should have been cited as quotations in the text. This, too, will be fixed,” she wrote.

A Twitter thread posted Wednesday by Vice correspondent Michael C. Moynihan listed several examples of passages in Abramson’s book that closely resembled the work of other publications, including Time Out and The New Yorker.

“I wouldn’t want even a misplaced comma, so I will promptly fix these footnotes and quotations as I have corrected other material that Vice contested,” Abramson wrote, noting that Vice had previously pointed out factual mistakes.

Abramson’s book, which is subtitled “The Business of News and the Fight for Facts,” was published this week by Simon & Schuster.

It’s a critique of the media that focuses on two leading newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post, along with Vice and fellow digital company BuzzFeed. — The Associated Press