Did People cut a sneaky deal with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt to get photos of the couple's newborn twins? Absolutely yes, the New York Times said last month. Today? Absolutely not, says the Times.

The newspaper hasn't retracted the story. But public editor Clark Hoyt, the paper's in-house media critic, delivered a scathing review, saying that reporter Brooks Barnes got the most basic fact wrong. Hoyt, after interviewing People editor Larry Hackett and various Jolie intermediaries, concludes that Jolie never even asked for an "editorial plan" promising favorable coverage when negotiating for photo rights — the key allegation in the Times piece. The only condition in the magazine's written contract to license the photos was that the interview be conducted by email. (Barnes told Hoyt that his anonymous sources stand by their version of the story.)

We always thought the Times piece oversold the editorial-plan angle. Why would any of the players involved put something like that in writing, when it's implicit? People editors never needed to promise favorable coverage; its cuddly Brangelina archive did the work for them. True, it's not as sexy as a backroom deal — but a more nuanced take on the workings of the celebrity-industrial complex might have spared Barnes the public ink-lashing.