A New York Times blog post echoed the Drudge Report's distortion of a 14 year old audio recording of President Obama talking about government's role in creating a society where everybody has a shot.

Tuesday afternoon, the Drudge Report linked to an audio recording apparently taken from a 1998 conference Obama attended at Loyola University, with the headline: “I actually believe in redistribution.” A post later that night on The New York Times' The Caucus blog echoed the cropped quote that Drudge highlighted:

By Tuesday afternoon, the campaign seemed to find its footing. Aides inside Mr. Romney's Boston headquarters began highlighting a video of their own: a 1998 clip showing Barack Obama, then a state senator, saying that he wanted the government to facilitate the distribution of wealth. “I actually believe in redistribution,” Mr. Obama said on the tape.

Soon, Mr. Romney was on Fox News, his television comfort zone, mocking the video. Twitter lit up with Romney aides taking the president to task for his word choice.

Suddenly, the mood in the Romney camp began to perk up, ever so slightly.

But Drudge's and The Times' version of the quote left off the rest of Obama's sentence in the audio recording: “at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody's got a shot.”

It also ignored the fact that Obama actually talked about both the government's role in providing services and the problems of ineffective government programs. For instance, Obama says in the audio, "[W]e do have to be innovative in thinking, what are the delivery systems that are actually effective and meet people where they live?"

(h/t Greg Sargent)