Determination 16: Committee for Effective Gun Control v. Minneapolis Tribune
Jon Willand, secretary of the Committee for Effective Crime Control, complained that inaccuracies in an editorial were not adequately corrected by the publishing of his letter to the editor with an editor’s note admitting the error.
Background: Willand complained that the editorial contained false information and sought to attack the credibility and good name of the committee. He said that bracketed material in the editorial gave the impression of stating the truth and of correcting the “errors” in the committee’s position. Willand claimed the complaint was “prompted by a long history of editorial abuse by the Mpls Star and Mpls Tribune.”
Response of the news organization: The newspaper editor said that the paper provided the complainant with a remedy by promptly printing his letter to the editor and by publicly admitting in the accompanying editor’s note that it had committed a factual error in writing the editorial. He suggested that other matters raised in the complaint fell into the “debatable inferences or interpretations contained in editorial comment area.”
Determination of the Council: The newspaper’s actions following the error were a sufficient remedy for the mistake. The remainder of the editorial constituted opinion and statements that were subject to “reasonable areas of disagreement, and therefore cannot be judged on the basis of error.”
The complaint against the newspaper is not upheld.
Tags: Minneapolis Tribune