After USA Today reported, falsely, that Elanco had covered up adverse event reports and withheld them from regulators, rather than issue a correction, Mr. Hettinger and USA Today simply deleted the story’s most significant paragraph. In fact, there was even a “Why This Story Matters” graphic, also removed. It was an egregious enough violation of the company’s own corrections policy to warrant an FYI to Newsguard, a fact-checking company. Fortunately for Gannett, this reporter's father is Newsguard's co-CEO- -and because of that, Newsguard determined that the risk for perception of conflict outweighed the need for them to downgrade Gannett’s rating, at least for now. However, TCR’s reporting shows what now amounts to more than two years of egregious violations of the most basic journalism standards. Note: This is a great newstip for a media reporter.

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