We noted earlier today that Friday's bombshell Outside The Lines report included some odd, paraphrased quoting of supposed text messages to Ray Rice. That, alongside the wild—later retracted—claims about the Revel Casino providing a copy of the tape to the Ravens and NFL security led us to examine exactly what editing has taken place on the OTL story since it was published Friday afternoon.


While most of the edits are of a proofreading sort, there are a few alleged errors of fact that are notable; chief among them is the assertion, later excised, that Ray Rice watched the Ravens-Bengals game with former teammate A.Q. Shipley. Shipley was otherwise engaged that day, on-field with the Colts, something ESPN's fact-checkers either neglected to look into or only got around to examining after the OTL article was published.


We don't know the precise number of edits made to the story—currently available for viewing here—since its publication, but the page itself notes it was "last updated: September 22, 5:52 PM ET." We counted 16 changes made to the Ray Rice story since its initial publication, though a few other edits might have taken place in the minutes between when it went up on ESPN's site and when we grabbed it.

ESPN's article as published is on the left; its currently available version is on the right, and the differences are highlighted.









While it's regular in this business to make silent copy edits, it's considered proper form to make clear to readers any corrections of fact. Absent that responsibility, a company ombudsman could take ESPN to task for it. Alas, he sees nothing wrong at all with the report.