[deong]

First, "don't make mistakes" is a policy so idiotic in its conception that I don't think there exists a good-faith argument for advocating for it.

Second, a "cover-up" is when you hide evidence of your past misconduct. Pleading guilty in public is in every possible way the literal opposite of covering something up. If they'd just deleted the article with no commentary at all, that's covering up the mistake. Leaving the original URL up with a notice that they erred in publishing the original story isn't.

[Karunamon]

Except it eliminates so much context as to make the apology meaningless. Unless you knew about the existence of the pre-delete story, all you know is that the story used to be one thing, now it's "NPR fucked up".