Today I unfortunately write to you, our reader.

It is unfortunate because I must call attention and correct a story we published last week, simply titled “The story of a Dallas activist.” The story contained a number of factual errors:
•The venue of the event is listed as the Texarkana Room. It should be Texana Room.
•The activist is twice named as Elmore Bedford. His name is actually Louis A. Bedford.
•Author Darwin Payne did not write the book in observance of Black History Month.
•Louis Bedford did not attend Brooklyn College Law School. He attended Brooklyn Law School.

Additionally, one sentence implies that the Dallas Bar Association was a sponsor of the lecture: “Payne… was eager to oblige the Dallas Bar Association’s request to write the book and give the lecture.”  White the Dallas Bar Association did in fact commission Payne to write the book, they did not sponsor any part of the lecture.

A mea culpa is in order.

Journalism is supposed to be based on fact. We are supposed to check every story for factual errors such as these. This did not happen, and I would like to apologize. It is never our intention to deliberately print factual errors.

The truth makes it clear that although we did not intend to print these errors, we are still at fault for not correcting them in the editing process. I won’t be making excuses and trying to place the blame on someone else. It was our fault.

Our next step is to make sure that something like this does not happen again.

All parties that should have been involved in the fact-checking process—editors and writer—have been spoken to and made to understand that this is not acceptable on any level. In the future we will be more diligent. Our duties and responsibilities require no less than 100 percent thoroughness.

You, as a reader of our paper, also have a responsibility: to let us know when we make mistakes. Do not let errors slide. If we as a paper fail to realize we are making mistakes, how can we correct them?

I do not mean to say that our readers will be the only way we will find errors. The process, as a whole, should fall to the students who put out this paper every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night.

In short, we messed up. But we are taking the necessary steps to better ourselves.
 

—Meredith Shamburger
    Editor in Chief