NYT says it was unfair on Haley curtain story

The New York Times added an editors’ note to a Thursday story saying a photo of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley should not have been included with a story about how the State Department had spend $52,701 for curtains at her official residence in New York.

The Times had received considerable blowback for the piece, headlined “Nikki Haley’s View of New York is Priceless. Her Curtains? $52,701.”

{mosads}The headline on the story was changed Friday to read “State Department Spent $52,701 on Curtains for Nikki Haley’s Residence,” but the preview headline on the paper’s official Twitter feed remains unchanged.

The editors’ note attached to the story said the article and headline “created an unfair impression” about those responsible for “the purchase in question.”

“An earlier version of this article and headline created an unfair impression about who was responsible for the purchase in question,” reads the statement. “While Nikki R. Haley is the current ambassador to the United Nations, the decision on leasing the ambassador’s residence and purchasing the curtains was made during the Obama administration, according to current and former officials.”

“The article should not have focused on Ms. Haley, nor should a picture of her have been used,” it concludes. “The article and headline have now been edited to reflect those concerns, and the picture has been removed.”

The changes comes after the Times was ripped on social media for being misleading in its headline after Haley’s spokesman told the paper the purchase of the curtains occurred during the Obama administration and that the fixtures were installed last year under former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s tenure that ended earlier this year.

1/ A word on the false meme bopping around about @nikkihaley’s $52,701 curtains. NYT story notes in 6th paragraph, “A spokesman for Ms. Haley said plans to buy the curtains were made in 2016, during the Obama administration. Ms. Haley had no say in the purchase, he said.”

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) September 14, 2018

2/ Elaborating, a source at the US Mission to the UN tells CNN: “It was decided, well before the election in 2016, that the US Ambassador’s residence would move from the Waldorf to its new location. The new location was unfurnished/unfinished….

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) September 14, 2018

3/ The source continues: “In June of 2016 it was decided that the State Department’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations would outfit the new residence (this is standard operating procedure for Ambassadors’ residences across the globe.)…

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) September 14, 2018

Misleading headline. Few are reading past the first couple grafs. And now most of Twitter thinks @nikkihaley is like Pruitt or Price when she’s not. How irresponsible. Read the whole story. Also the rent is less expensive than previous admins https://t.co/XpeZzi2wg9

— Yashar Ali (@yashar) September 14, 2018

Yet again I say: if you are one of my friends on the left promoting this garbage, I don’t ever, ever, ever want to hear you claim you “care about facts”. The NYT piece says curtains were ordered while Obama was still President. This is a partisan hit job. https://t.co/zWXKsSrS5o

— Kristen Soltis Anderson (@KSoltisAnderson) September 14, 2018

NYT changes its ⁦@nikkihaley⁩ story in a pretty significant way. Her predecessor actually authorized the $52,000 curtains in her UN residence. https://t.co/iPNAH4PB5o

— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) September 14, 2018

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) also took to Twitter to slam the Times for the “subtle” manner the “media pushes their bias.”

“Want an example of subtle ways media pushes their bias?” Rubio said in a tweet. “See this completely false & misleading headline about ⁦@nikkihaley. They are not “her curtains” & buried deep in story is the fact that this purchase was made under Obama administration.”