Good on NYT for coming clean, but this is precisely why I don't trust institutions to vet their own product. "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission" is a mission statement for pathological organizations to get away with gambling on the market and socializing their failures.
They didn't come clean, it's clear from the article they were busted.
They strongly resisted multiple challenges to the obvious problems with his accounts by other writers and organisations culminating in him being arrested for fraud.
I'm sorry but this is such an unfair take. If they were posting corrections like this daily or weekly, then you could argue for EAFP. But your comment implies that they do zero vetting and just publish whatever they want. It completely misses the nuance that "getting permission" isn't a black and white issue. It's a spectrum and you're rarely ever at 100%. You sometimes gotta make the call to publish a story at 95% or so, and in rare occasions it just turns out to not go your way.
You're implying that they should never post a story unless they are 100% certain, which means most stories would never get published, defeating the entire point of journalism. Obviously the threshold needs to be high, you don't want to post every single rumor, but just because they have 1 or 2 correction a year does not mean "they'd rather ask for forgiveness than get permission".
Of course, the NYT got rid of their public editor--i.e. their ombudsman. But I disagree a bit, an ombudsman is more reactive; it's not reasonable for them to vet every story before it's printed. That's the job of the editors and their editors.
This seems a pretty major failing. Of course, they always seem that way after the fact. And TBH a lot of stories run that can't be verified beyond the tiniest shade of a doubt that are substantially accurate.
My only experience with ombudsmen is ignored emails until top stakeholders face the pain, then immediate action to resolve their and only their issues.
