Photo: Anthony Camerano/? Corbis. All Rights Reserved.
The first published version of the New York Times’ Ed Koch obituary by Robert McFadden, while detailed and touching, left out the harsh criticisms the former mayor faced for his handling of the city’s AIDS crisis, drawing its own rebukes from critics on Twitter. “We’re addressing that,” Times obits editor Bill McDonald told Daily Intelligencer this morning, and three paragraphs have since been added. “Hundreds of New Yorkers were desperately ill and dying in a baffling public health emergency, and critics, especially in the gay community, accused him of being a closeted homosexual reluctant to confront the crisis for fear of being exposed,” the section reads now, noting that Koch was long “upset and defensive about the criticism.”
