Does anyone remember newspaper “corrections”?

Let me explain the concept to younger GetReligion readers. Back in the days of ink-on-paper news, if a news organization made a mistake, the editors used to print an actual correction, noting the error and providing the correct information. Then, early in the online era, they would add a “correction” blurb at the top of a story and then insert a detailed correction at the end (or some variation on these items).

Then some, not all, news organizations simply started correcting mistakes — in the never-ending flow of online copy — without admitting that they made these mistakes in the first place. Thus, savvy news readers began making screenshots of errors they spotted, knowing that this was the only definitive way to prove the error ever existed.

Now, we have something really strange going on in the following Reuters news report: “Catholic Church to beatify Polish family, including new-born baby, killed by Nazis.”

If you follow Catholic Twitter, it appears that there were errors in an earlier version of this story.

Maybe. It’s hard to tell.

Then again, the current version of the story (as I wrote this) appears to contain a clash between two different accounts of this beatification story.

Start here: Note the “including new-born baby” reference in the headline.Then, let’s work through this, starting with the lede from several days ago:

VATICAN CITY, Sept 5 (Reuters) — The Catholic Church is to beatify a Polish family of nine including a new-born baby who died at the hands of the Nazis during World War Two, the Vatican's saint-making department said.