The NYT backtracks further on the Jewish temples

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Rick Gladstone's now infamous article, Historical Certainty Proves Elusive at Jerusalem’s Holiest Place, published last week in the New York Times, now prominently indicates just below the headline, "Editor's Note Appended," with a link to the note at the end of the article:

Editors’ Note: October 13, 2015
An article on Thursday, with the headline “Historical Certainty Proves Elusive at Jerusalem’s Holiest Place,” examined the scholarly debate about two ancient Jewish temples on the Temple Mount, a site sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians. While the article laid out the history of the Jewish temples and the archaeological and historical evidence about them, the headline and a passage in the initial version of the article implied incorrectly that questions among scholars about the location of the temples potentially affected Jewish claims to the site and Israel’s broader assertion of sovereignty over Jerusalem. In fact, as the article was later corrected to clarify, the scholarly debate is a narrower one, focused on the precise location on the Temple Mount where the long destroyed temples once stood. All versions of the article should have made clear that the archaeological and historical uncertainties about the site — unlike assertions by some Palestinians that the temples never existed — do not directly challenge Jewish claims to the Temple Mount.

The note is also published under "Corrections" here.

Some problems remain with the article itself: the implications that Matthew Adams said that the very existence of the temples was an "academically complex subject"; the implication that only "many Israelis" think otherwise; and the lack of mention of the Waqf's illicit and damaging excavations on the Temple Mount.

But the new editorial note does refer to both temples as historical; it makes clear that claims that there were no temples on the Temple Mount come from "some Palestinians" and do not fall under "archaeological and historical uncertainties about the site"; it says that the issue at question, insofar as there is an issue at all, is where exactly the temples stood on the Temple Mount; and it confirms that the historical evidence does not support political claims that there is no Jewish connection to the site.

Well done, all those who challenged the Times on the serious problems with this article. And I give the Times credit for making this fuller correction, although a good bit of the damage caused by the article cannot now be undone.

I think we can call this one a win.

Background here, here, and here.

Additional Note: In 2005 I published an essay about blogging on the SBL Forum website in which I predicted that there would come a time when:

... any professional news story will be subject to immediate criticism by experts and eyewitnesses; these worthwhile responses will be indexed next to the story itself by intelligent software; and everyone will know to check for them. The emergent order we can see developing around us even now will let the cream rise to the top and hold the media (and bloggers!) accountable for their every word as soon as it is uttered.

And I have further comments on the subject in a 2010 SBL paper. We aren't there yet, but we're getting closer.