Determination 34: MN Tenants Union v. 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.
Tags: Whittier Globe