The Daily Emerald printed a front page headline story that announced that an article printed on Jan. 29 (“Recycling to update sorting methods”) was entirely incorrect.

Emerald Editor in Chief Brad Schmidt writes two articles, one that corrects the mistake and another that apologizes for it.

From the apology:

“As mistakes are noticed, internally or externally, the Emerald does all it can to fix the error and ensure it doesn’t happen again. When Emerald staff members make large errors, such as spelling someone’s name wrong or distorting a vital fact, the newspaper prints a correction (usually on Page 3).

When the story is completely inaccurate, however, it is even more pressing that the wrong be made right. In this instance, I immediately took the story off the Emerald’s Web site to prevent more readers from being misinformed. I talked with Environmental Resource and Recycling Program Manager Karyn Kaplan to find out the proper facts. And I made the decision that — although Kaplan had sent out e-mails to properly inform the campus community and had said she felt the situation was resolved — the mistake had to be addressed in the same way it had been originally presented.

Today, on the same day of the week and in the same place on Page 1, the Emerald acknowledges that it grossly misinformed readers. For that we truly apologize.”

I’d have to say that this is a pretty gutsy and ethical decision on Schmidt’s part. Students never saw an admittance of a mistake by last year’s Ed-in-Chief Mike Kleckner when questionable news stories were printed by the Emerald.

I would link to the recycling article in question, but Google doesn’t seem to keep cached versions of news articles.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 5th, 2004 at 10:49 by Sho and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.