Is this sorry enough?

It's not clear to me from this report that the newspaper used the "s" word, but I'd say this was pretty thoroughly abject:  no weaseling.

6 comments:

E Hines said...

we feel it is important to repeat this apology

And a description of what they did to correct it. Their full apology is here.

This is what they should have done the first time, but for what it's worth, it satisfies this frequent critic of sham apologies.

Eric Hines

Texan99 said...

I have to wonder how this could have happened. Could it really have been some inappropriate joking that they catastrophically failed to delete before printing? Did someone insert it on purpose, in a kind of spiteful message about their view of the cops' real views? In any case, it's completely appropriate that whoever failed to proofread it was fired.

MikeD said...

I have to wonder how this could have happened. Could it really have been some inappropriate joking that they catastrophically failed to delete before printing? Did someone insert it on purpose, in a kind of spiteful message about their view of the cops' real views? In any case, it's completely appropriate that whoever failed to proofread it was fired.

I don't know which two people were fired, but the two who OUGHT to have been fired were the one who changed the quote, and the one who failed to catch the change. To answer your question, Tex, I can only believe this was a spiteful message if the person making the change was quitting anyway. Because there is literally no way that you are keeping your job after doing something like this to your employer.

I think it was certainly a case of an editor putting a thumb in the eye of law enforcement but never intending it to go out (unless, as I said, that person was willing to commit career suicide). My only complaint with the apology was referring to this as "a mistake". A mistake is (as mentioned) an incorrect font size. Or a typo (a common one is the infamous dropping of the "L" from the word "public"). This was someone making a conscious decision that they actually thought would never be seen outside of the person or two that they showed it to, and the failure of the copy editor to catch before it went out. That's not "a mistake", that's professional negligence. And I'd have been happier if they'd referred to it as an "incident" or "sabotage". Because intentional or not, this is the kind of thing that will end careers and cost the paper advertising money (its very lifeblood).

Texan99 said...

Good point. It was a mistake only in the sense that no one caught what the two malfeasors did, before it was too late. On their part, sabotage is a more accurate word. I hope they never work again.

MikeD said...

That's probably not going to be a problem. If you were potentially going to hire someone who had this on their record, would you be willing to give them a chance to do the same to your newspaper?

Texan99 said...

Right! If you were a left-wing or otherwise virulently anti-cop rag, you might recognize them as kindred spirits, but you might still wonder whether they could be trusted the next time they judged your ideology less than pure.