The New York Times edited its damning editorial condemning the Obama administration for collecting phone call data from Americans to make it less stinging shortly after the editorial was published online Thursday afternoon.

The editorial originally declared that the Obama “administration has lost all credibility” as a result of the recently revealed news that the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been secretly collecting call data from American users of Verizon under the authority of the Patriot Act.

But hours later the stinging sentence had been modified to read the Obama “administration has now lost all credibility on this issue.” [Emphasis added]

According to NewsDiffs.com, a website which tracks changes to online articles, at 3:34 p.m. ET the editorial damned the Obama administration generally and by 7:09 p.m. ET it had been edited to damn the Obama administration more narrowly over its collection of call data.

NewsDiffs also showed that several other modifications had been made to the editorial, but none as significant as its change to the originally broad condemnation of the Obama administration.

The new version of the article contains no indication that it has been changed.

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