Saturday, August 19, 2006

LA Times Apologizes


Who's Apologizing Now?


The LA Times for publishing an article that "mis-informed" a British lecturer who made comments to his class he got directly from the LA Times article on Skid Row and the homeless.

From LA Observed:

'The Times completely misinformed me'
"It's not unusual for someone to claim that a newspaper misinformed them. It is quite unusual, though, for the complaint to come from a Los Angeles Times contributor — about the paper that commissioned him to write a piece on Skid Row gentrification that led the July 30 Current section.
Jon Regardie on the front page of the Downtown News has the story of Tom Slater, a lecturer in urban studies at Britain's University of Bristol, who has apologized for writing that the Central City East Association "literally swept and hosed [the homeless] out of their makeshift encampments" downtown. In emails to CCEA head Estela Lopez, Slater blamed Current editors for sending him errant information. "

And here's the LAT's APOLOGY 1-2-3:
Regardie talked to Current editor Nick Goldberg about it:
1. (Dispicable act) "It was a mistake," he said by phone. "As soon as it appeared in the paper we realized it was a mistake.

2. (Public Apology) We were very sorry to have done it. We ran a correction and we ran a letter about the subject. We feel very bad for having misrepresented what happened.

3. (Justification) The error came about because of a misreading of the story the Times had printed by Cara Mia DiMassa. I think that the error was the Times' fault - not Tom's. The information came from us."

NOT BUYING IT:
Kudos to "Brady Westwater, president of the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council, has posted several critiques of the Times story on his blog and reacts strongly at LA Cowboy to the Downtown News story: "So the Los Angeles Times lied to him - and then refused to admit in public that they had lied to him with false information! So I guess there is no honor among thieves - or lying journalists." "