Determination
34
Minnesota
News Council
In the Matter of the Complaint of
Minnesota Tenants Union against the Whittier Globe
The Minnesota Tenants Union (MTU) complained that an
editorial did not adequately support charges of misuse of public funds
with factual evidence and balanced comment. The MTU claimed the paper
did not respond satisfactorily to complaints of inaccuracies in the
editorial.
Background: An editorial in the January 1979
edition of the newspaper alleged misuse of public funds and other
improprieties by the MTU. The monthly community newspaper is distributed
free to the 10,000 residents of the Whittier neighborhood in south
Minneapolis. The MTU is a tenants advocacy group funded by public
and private sources.
The editorial alleged, among other things, that the
MTU held fundraisers without paying sales taxes or entering the proceeds
in its books, allowed another organization to use MTU facilities free
of charge, paid two staff members vacation pay while they were in
jail, and spent an exorbitant amount on long-distance phone calls.
The editorial writer said he based the charges on a conversation he
overheard between two staff members of a Twin Cities area adult entertainment
magazine. The writer also reported that the MTU director would not
respond to the charges.
Following publication of the editorial, the MTU director
complained to the paper that the charges were not true, and that the
editorial contained more than a dozen inaccuracies. The director requested
that a retraction he had prepared be published in the paper's February
issue, but the newspaper offered to run only a revised statement as
a letter to the editor, along with an apology. The two parties failed
to reach agreement on the matter, and the paper ran instead another
editorial by the same writer in which he acknowledged that some of
the charges were in error, although he stood by the other charges.
The writer also asserted that the paper was not responsible for any
of the charges because they were not the paper's charges originally,
but were made by the two staff members of the adult magazine.
The MTU, after unsuccessfully attempting to complain
a second time to the paper, complained that the editorial writer had
treated the charges as fact without including any supporting evidence,
that he misrepresented the MTU's response to the charges, and that
the second editorial did not adequately correct the errors in the
first editorial. The MTU also complained that the paper should not
be allowed to disavow responsibility for publishing the charges merely
by attributing them to others.
Response of the news organization: In response
to the complaint, the newspaper asked the Council to take into consideration
the special nature of community newspapers. The paper said it had
a volunteer staff of only several inexperienced editors, and that
it printed whatever was submitted to it provided the material was
"credible, understandable, and within its space limitations." The
paper also said it felt its offer to print the MTU's statement as
a letter to the editor along with an apology from the newspaper was
reasonable. (At the hearing, the paper said it was not aware of the
legal definition of "retraction.")
Determination of the Council: The emergence
of the community press in the Twin Cities can only help to enrich
and enhance the public information network so essential to a democratic
society. But there should exist some sort of nonlegal mechanism for
resolving disputes with the community press. Therefore, the Council
believes it is appropriate to include the community press within its
purview.
Community newspapers lack the resources of full-time
professional newspapers, however, and hence should not be expected
to maintain the same quality of reporting and editing. But when a
news medium - whether a community newspaper or a national network
- publishes unofficial charges damaging to a person or group, that
news medium has an obligation to double-check the accuracy and reliability
of the allegations to the best of its ability. The cost of doing so
is far less than the cost of the damage that can be done to an innocent
party.
The paper did not fulfill its responsibility to investigate
the charges before publishing them. The two editorials contained inaccuracies
and unsupported allegations. Although the MTU director did not respond
directly concerning the charges, he did direct the editorial writer
to his responses published elsewhere; in the interest of fairness
and thoroughness, the editorial writer could easily have included
a description of those responses in his editorials. In addition, the
paper failed in its obligation to correct the errors promptly and
prominently.
Finally, the paper's assertion that it should be
able to disavow responsibility for publishing unofficial charges,
simply by attributing them to other sources, cannot be accepted. That
the charges were made by others is no excuse. Every news organization
must accept responsibility for what it publishes, no matter what the
origin.
The complaint against the newspaper is upheld.
March 6, 1979
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