In an analysis posted Friday night on the New York Times website and published in the Saturday edition of the paper, Juliet Macur of the Times presumed that the NFL’s new HGH testing program would entail one test per year.
The league, via spokesman Greg Aiello, responded aggressively, and yet as of this morning there was no clarification or correction.
Earlier today, the Times got its facts straight, publishing a new article that contains no byline, and by appending a correction to the original article, even though this newfangled Internet contraption allows edits to be made to the body of an erroneous article.
“While one reporter for The Times had the additional details,” the new article states, “the reporter who wrote the article with experts assessing the details did not.” (At least they didn’t say the article was taken out of context.)
That said, the new article subtly couches the fact that testing will occur on more than an annual basis as the league’s contention, even though the league has shared with PFT (and presumably with the Times) the language from the new CBA that states, unequivocally, that testing will occur both on an annual basis and on a random basis. (Though the new article states that the league declined to provide the actual drug policy, the policy is a different document than the CBA.)
Either way, it’ll be interesting to see whether the matter gets prominent treatment in the Sunday Times, or whether it’ll be buried at the bottom of the page with the off-off-Broadway listings.