Students and journalists, being imperfect people, sometimes make mistakes. Since journalists generally make their mistakes in public, they're often pilloried in public for making them. That's simply part of the deal. As Hunter Thompson was fond of saying, "Buy the ticket, take the ride."
Thompson also wrote about one constant of politics and journalism: "You will be flogged for being right and flogged for being wrong, and it hurts both ways - but it doesn't hurt as much when you're right."
This academic year, The Cavalier Daily staff has been flogged quite a bit. In addition to having their errors recounted and amplified, The Cavalier Daily has been accused of conspiring to cover up University connections to a young woman's disappearance and murder; of being part of a liberal media conspiracy to vilify conservatives and Tea Partiers while ignoring threats against conservatives; and, most recently, of harboring an anti-Israel cabal in the bowels of Newcomb Hall.
That last was triggered by an unfortunate headline error that mistakenly said Israel had executed two Palestinians. In fact, Hamas did the executing.
E-mails poured in charging willful negligence, prejudice and appalling ignorance and calling for an investigation. No one, as far as I know, called for the headline writer to be arrested or drummed out of the University. Even so, everyone should take a deep breath, dismount from those high horses and try to rein in their emotions so reason can have a turn.
An investigation has been conducted.
According to Ross Lawrence, the paper's editor-in-chief, this error was made some time between 1 a.m. and the paper's 1:15 a.m. deadline. While some have suggested ignorance and lack of integrity bred the headline, it more likely came from deadline pressure and lack of sleep.
Once the error was made, it was made worse because it was in the news racks for so long. Published in the last edition of the week, the paper was available all through the weekend. The online PDF version of the paper was corrected much sooner, but the paper version was out there for days. Perhaps that helps explain the vitriol. Well, that and the fact that people have been fighting for centuries over the land currently governed by Israel and competing Palestinian governments.
The headline was a bad mistake. No question. But it was corrected as quickly as possible. The paper printed corrections and apologized twice in the next edition. The same corrections and apologies are online. The paper printed letters from its critics. Lawrence apologized in e-mails to at least some of the folks upset by the headline.
This next part isn't meant to take sides in the Middle East, and it certainly isn't meant to support Hamas, but it seems only fair to hold the people who wrote to complain about the mistaken headline to the same standard to which they've held the headline writer.
They called the headline "a libel against Israel," said whoever wrote it "would have to be appallingly ignorant of world affairs even to think that such a headline could make sense" and pointed out that "Israel did not execute anyone." Consider the first line of the story that ran under that headline. "The Hamas-led government in the Gaza Strip yesterday executed two Palestinians convicted of providing Israel with information that led to the assassination of Palestinian militants."
The people executed had been convicted of giving information to Israel that enabled Israel to assassinate Palestinian militants. Unless someone challenges the last part of that sentence - and none of the letters I saw did - it must not be libelous or require appalling ignorance to think that Israel may have killed Palestinians. According to many reports, including one from The Times of London that claims to have sources in the Israeli intelligence service, earlier this year, Israeli agents killed Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Using forged passports and appropriating the names of citizens of several countries, someone killed al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room.
Israelis and Palestinians have been killing each other for a long time. That's not a suggestion of moral equivalence. That's simply a statement of fact.
So maybe it's people who suggest it would take appalling ignorance to believe Israel may have killed Palestinians who need education.
Someone compared The Cavalier Daily's mistake to printing a headline saying the United States flew planes into the World Trade Center. Really? Erroneously saying that one country killed two members of a group it's more or less at war with is the same as erroneously saying that the United States mounted a series of attacks that killed nearly 3,000 of its own citizens?
Now, that's appalling.
I understand that people are passionate. I understand that people felt aggrieved by this error. But sometimes - most times, actually - the default reaction should not be to turn your response to up to 11.
Tim Thornton is The Cavalier Daily's ombudsman. His column appears Mondays.
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