(Credit: New York Times, screenshot)

A New York Times correction on its Nov. 20 article, “Obama, Showing Support for Israel, Gains New Leverage over Netanyahu,” was corrected at some point after publication, only to have the correction later go missing.

Re-publications of an earlier version of the article carry a Nov. 20 correction that reads

“This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

“Correction: November 20, 2012

“An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the Iron Dome antimissile system. It is American-financed, but not American-made.”

But the article as seen by iMediaEthics Nov. 22, which notes at the bottom it ran in the print edition of the New York Times on Nov. 21, doesn’t carry any correction or notes of any changes.  The report does appear to have corrected text though, as a sentence in the article reads:

“And it is Mr. Obama who has provided financing for the Iron Dome missile defense system, which has prevented hundreds of rockets from hitting Israeli targets.”

iMediaEthics wrote to the Times’ Mark Landler, who shared a byline on the article, asking why the correction is missing.  Landler told iMediaEthics by email that

“The correction you saw on that article — referring the Iron Dome anti-missile system — was dropped because it applied to an earlier, different article that I wrote exclusively for the Web.

“The print article, by Helene Cooper and me, explored the new leverage between President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, following Mr. Obama’s reelection.

“The Web article was about Mr. Obama reinserting himself into the Middle East by sending Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to help broker a cease fire between Israel and Hamas.”

iMediaEthics has written to Philip B. Corbett, the Times’ associate managing editor for standards, asking why the correction was taken down, as it could suggest the Times was trying to hide the error. We’ll update with any response.

iMediaEthics has previously written about NewsDiffs, a website that records changes to online articles on several news sites including the New York Times. iMediaEthics couldn’t find this article from the Times posted on NewsDiffs.