An online news article can change while keeping the same address. Usually that is journalism working: information arrives, a source answers a question, or a mistake is corrected. But it creates a problem when people later disagree about what the page originally said.
Opening the link today doesn't necessarily establish what someone read yesterday.
A changing article needs a history
Crossbencher's July 2026 archive review recorded changes in 169 of 374 re-fetched articles, with 99 classified by its own screen as substantive. Those figures describe a particular sample and a judgement made by that screen. They aren't an estimate of dishonesty across the press, and they don't establish why any individual page changed.
The relevant issue is whether earlier versions remain available. A reader can accurately remember a sentence that no longer appears. Another reader can reasonably doubt them because the link now shows something else. Without a saved version, neither can easily demonstrate what happened.
A correction note helps where a newsroom publishes one. Routine updates can also change an account without giving a reader a complete version history.
Keep the evidence before the argument
Archiving doesn't establish that a claim was true. It establishes what a particular capture contained at a particular time. A timestamp and a file that can be checked make later discussion more reliable than memory alone.
Fact-checking and archiving do different jobs. A fact-check may assess a claim against other evidence. An archive preserves material that the assessment may need. Neither is a complete substitute for the other.
The difficult part is saving a version before anyone knows it will matter. Once a sentence has been replaced, an archive started afterwards may be too late.
None of this requires assuming a plan to conceal mistakes. Continuous publishing produces a changing record even when everyone is acting in good faith. That is enough reason to preserve versions.
When making a claim about what an outlet previously reported, I would rather begin with the copy and its date. If we don't have one, we should be clear about what we can establish and what we are asking others to take on trust.