On Monday, however, Executive Editor Dean Baquet admitted that the Biden campaign's reaction to the piece played a role in making the changes. He explained the situation as part of a
longer storythat detailed why the
New York Times waited 14 days to cover Reade's allegations.
"Even though a lot of us, including me, had looked at it before the story went into the paper, I think that the campaign thought that the phrasing was awkward and made it look like there were other instances in which he had been accused of sexual misconduct," he explained. "And that’s not what the sentence was intended to say."
He added, "We didn’t think it was a factual mistake. I thought it was an awkward phrasing issue that could be read different ways and that it wasn’t something factual we were correcting. So I didn’t think that was necessary [to explain]."
The original sentence from the story read, "The
Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable." It was later changed to: "The
Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden."