We erred, we’re sorry

We erred – egregiously – last week. We take full responsibility and we are sorry. Sincerely so.

Here is what happened:

In The Eagle’s Feb. 19 edition, we published a paragraph in the Student Senate article quoting Sen. Katrina Hurley who claimed in the Feb. 16 open meeting that “over 75 percent of the cameras on campus do not work.” She added that she was working with security to solve the problem.

We failed to double check Hurley’s claim. It turned out to be inaccurate.

CSC President Randy Rhine issued a campus-wide email Feb. 19, setting the record straight about the cameras. He noted that the campus has 117 security cameras, and of those, 113 are “doing their jobs as designed.” Repairs for the four remaining cameras are in the works.

At the Senate meeting this past Monday, Hurley acknowledged she had been provided inaccurate information.

Our second, and perhaps most serious error appeared on our opinion page in that same Feb. 19 edition. We  published commentary from a student who had attended the Feb. 16 Student Senate meeting. The student’s piece repeated the erroneous claim about downed security cameras and harshly criticized the CSC administration.

That student writer, while a regular contributor to our opinion page, is not a staff member of The Eagle.

We should not have run that piece.

How we failed:

In the news article, reporter Jaycie Cheatham should have followed up after the meeting and questioned the Senator’s claim. News Editor Sarah Townsend, a sitting Student Senator, is not permitted to review, edit, or comment on Senate stories; that responsibility falls to Editor Jordyn Hulinsky, who should have challenged Cheatham’s story.

About the commentary, Hulinsky and Opinion Editor Spike Jordan together should have challenged the “75 percent” figure, recognized its potential for error, then concluded that the commentator’s criticism was misplaced.

In short, we are taught better, we know better, and we know we blew it.

Our remedies:

On Feb. 19, we corrected the online version of the news article and pulled the student commentator’s piece from our website.

This past week, we identified how and why we made those errors; we reviewed and reflected upon the professional reporting and copy-editing standards we are taught and strive to employ; and we recommitted ourselves to holding each other accountable for the standards of our profession.

Our errors affecting the college were grievous, and we sincerely apologize to President Rhine and his administration.

But in our opinion, the damage done to the college pales in comparison to the damage we have done to our credibility.

We have broken the trust our readers place in us. That trust cannot be restored with a late-afternoon email—or even this column.

To our readers, we sincerely apologize. We know it will take time to rebuild the credibility we have lost. We promise we will do everything we can to restore it.

We owe that to all of you.