Glenn Greenwald, Pick Up the Phone Once in a While

In a recent column, Glenn Greenwald accuses me of surreptitiously changing a headline on an earlier post from "Glenn Greenwald Compares the Iraq War to the Nazi Conquest of Europe" to "The Iraq War and the Conquest of Europe."  This change, he says, is more evidence of my moral failings, of which there are many:

Goldberg blared a thoroughly false accusation in his headline that was picked up in several places, then apparently changed it once he realized it was false, but without a single indication of the change or even a retraction.  Because he offered no explanation, one can only speculate about what led him to do this.

Well, no, speculation isn't the only choice. Reporting would have been another choice. If Greenwald had called me, or written, I would have told him that a new intern at The Atlantic quite innocently changed the headline without my knowledge, to match a headline written for the Atlantic's International Channel, where the original headline was too long to fit. I didn't know about this change until someone alerted me to Glenn Greenwald's charge. We've changed the headline back to the original, the one that accuses Greenwald of comparing the Iraq War to the Nazi conquest of Europe. And the intern, who is very smart, but very new, now knows that blog posts aren't allowed to be altered without the permission of the blogger.

By the way, Glenn, if you don't believe me, you could call or write James Bennet, the editor of The Atlantic, or Bob Cohn, the editor of TheAtlantic.com, and ask them yourselves. This is obviously something you should have before you made your reckless charge, but better late than never.