In the news business, it’s nothing personal
A striking item appeared under "Letters to the Editor" on April 2: a signed, personal apology from a midlevel editor at Stars and Stripes addressed "To the members of the National Guard."
The editor, Patrick Dickson, was seeking to make amends for a journalistic lapse he had been instrumental in a few days earlier as Washington bureau chief.
I found the apology troubling, both in concept and execution.
Journalism is a group undertaking, like team sports or military operations. Victory or defeat is rarely, if ever, the product of one individual’s acting alone. All share in success, and all in failure, even when one moment or deed stands out.
Mainstream newspapers should not be co-opted as vehicles for anguished staffers’ personal redemption any more than they should be for settling their personal scores.
The bureau chief appealed to Editorial Director Terry Leonard to let him publish his apology as a personal act of contrition — and Leonard agreed.
He was impressed with the bureau chief’s deep regret at having let slip into Stars and Stripes — under the byline of an unwitting reporter — another newspaper’s broad and gratuitous characterization of National Guardsmen as "inexperienced" in a story about the 82nd Airborne Division’s heading to Afghanistan to train local security forces. (See "The perils of not giving credit where credit is due," April 3.)
Leonard agreed to this unorthodox request because of what he saw as the severity of the offense and the toll it was taking on a valued member of his staff.
"The problem with the ‘inexperienced’ line itself was not that it was just an error," Leonard told me by e-mail. "I think it was also an insult, a direct slap in the face to thousands of men and women who read us every day.
"Many of these ‘inexperienced’ guardsmen are on their second, third or fourth deployment. They quite possibly are better trained to coach local police than men trained to be airborne shock troops.
"The guardsmen are often dismissed as ‘weekend warriors.’ We essentially repeated and elevated that insult. They are American soldiers serving in harm’s way and this newspaper will accord them the dignity that requires. I viewed this error as a breach in the pact of trust we have with our readers."
I don’t quarrel with Leonard’s sentiments, or with Dickson’s sense of accountability. In fact, I applaud them. But I respectfully disagree with where that led them.
"I believed that instead of a simple correction, it required a more formal apology," Leonard continued, "an acknowledgment by us that we understood not only that we had made a mistake but also what harm that mistake had caused.
"Pat wanted to protect his reporter, whose reputation was being battered by Pat’s mistake. Normally I would not agree, and go with an unsigned editor’s note. But in this case, I thought the insult, as unintended as it was, was so hurtful that a personal acceptance of responsibility and a personal apology was more appropriate."
There are several reasons why I fault Leonard’s decision despite his eloquent explanation.
First, the misdeed had resulted from haste and carelessness, not malice. An unsigned editor’s note — or perhaps one signed by Leonard himself — explaining the oversight and expressing the newspaper’s regret would not only have been sufficient but would also have added institutional heft.
If Leonard had felt the paper still needed to go beyond that, he could have ordered up a series on the National Guard as the country neared eight years of war. Those articles could have rightly been expected to note that guardsmen were sometimes depicted as "inexperienced" but that their rich record of service in Iraq and Afghanistan, including their being entrusted with the command of regular Army units, contradicted that.
Because of its fidgety status as an autonomous newspaper whose budget is partly subsidized by the Pentagon and whose journalists are government employees, Stars and Stripes is sensitive about opinions and personal sentiments expressed under its banner.
It can print no editorials of its own, and only reprints others’. It has no Op-Ed columnists on staff, save the ombudsman, whose primary duty is to guard the newspaper’s operation under the First Amendment and ensure that its journalism is independent and on par with contemporary practices.
Under that rubric, the only other people who would seem to be entitled to publish signed statements are the editorial director and the publisher, and then, I would argue, only in extraordinary circumstances.
As to responsibility, the Washington bureau chief did not act alone. At least two other editors, and possibly three, would have read that article before it was published and posted online, and none challenged "inexperienced."
Also troubling was that the apology enjoyed prominent display in a box atop the "Letters to the Editor" page and carried the unusual salutation "To the members of the National Guard."
I am reminded of how the executive editor of The New York Times, Bill Keller, responded in 2005 when an essay in his own newspaper’s Book Review section incensed him. Keller sent off, yup, a "letter to the editor" that appeared with no fanfare amid a contingent of letters, his name and identity merely listed at the end of his own.
Dickson had one other option that might have been acceptable for expressing his feelings, the Stripes Central blog. Had he been denied his personal apology in print, he might have posted a statement of regret there. Journalism online has a different feel to it, is more flexible in form and often more personal — and is increasingly more widely read.
In the future, I hope any staffer looking to publish an open letter will simply consider buying an ad.
These days, we can use the money.
Got a question or suggestion for the ombudsman on what appears, or should appear, in Stars and Stripes? Send an e-mail to ombudsman@stripes.osd.mil, or phone 202-761-0945 in the States. To comment on this column, please go to Mark Prendergast’s Right to Know blog. It can be found here.
