Anyone who writes for a living
knows the sinking feeling that
comes with being wrong. The imperfection stares back like a dark, ugly mole on the face in the mirror. A mechanic can go back to his bench and get the correct wrench. A baker can toss botched results and start over. Writers’ blunders lie there for thousands to see unless and until they are corrected. The fact that errors are the nature of humanity forces each of us to decide how to deal with them. Some choose denial and hope the matter eventually will fade away. Others become defensive and try to fault other people or conditions for their mistakes. There also are those who will halfheartedly apologize to the victims of their error. But some just flatly admit their mistake and apologize for it. I’ve always believed that the only way to heal a wound created by error is to lance it with a razor-sharp honesty that creates pain followed by healing. The truth is a demanding taskmaster. None of us sets out to be wrong. But the human qualities somehow find a way to remind us how painful it can be whenever we assume anything. So it was last week that I felt moved to apologize to fellow journalist Bill Dedman after I employed my obviously inadequate memory to mischaracterize the findings of his Pulitzer Prize-winning series, “The Color of Money.” My mistake was that I assumed that my memory was sufficient to recall the basis of his findings of how banks were declining to make loans in the middleclass black neighborhoods of Atlanta. But instead of black middle class, I wrote “low-income neighborhoods,” which reversed the true meaning of his findings.
It is no fun to have to sit down and tell those who trust you that you were wrong. I’d rather go to the driveway, slam my hand in the car door and be done with it. But the truth is that I was wrong.
It is little comfort that I am not alone. I could ask most of my colleagues for similar stories of when they inadvertently got a fact wrong, prompting a correction. Dedman, a former colleague in the Investigative Reporters & Editors organization, certainly understands. In an e-mail exchange last week, he said it so well: “If we didn’t write, we wouldn’t make mistakes.”
When I returned to Arkansas in 1995 as editor of the Northwest Arkansas Times, a review of the newspaper’s unsavory role in defeating Dan Coody in his 1992 Fayetteville mayoral race prompted me to write a full-page apology to Coody on behalf of the newspaper. Although the last-minute smear campaign on election eve had been conducted by a previous administration, I believed that the right thing was for our paper to restore the respect that we had stolen from him through innuendo and false rumors.
Another personal stumble that always will resonate in my memory occurred in Phoenix, Ariz., when my former partner, the late Chuck Cook, and I were examining the public financial disclosure records of then-Gov. Evan Mecham. This was months before his impeachment. Chuck and I valued thoroughness. We had collected what we believed was every disclosure form ever filed by Mecham as a public official. We even resorted to what we called a line-by-line review of stories that made sure we could verify every finding. The resulting story alleging the governor’s failure to list his business ran at the top of the front page. Then came the phone call from his staff. They informed us that he had, indeed, listed the company, and they faxed over a copy of an amended filing that somehow had not shown up in the records we had collected and repeatedly checked. Talk about feeling one’s tonsils sink like smooth, round river rocks to one’s stomach. But hey, the truth was the truth and it was clear that we had violated it no matter how loudly we shrieked or how many times our heads pounded our desks. The resulting “skin-back” story the following day also appeared on Page One. From that point on, I placed a sign that read “Never Assume” on my desk as a reminder. That sign obviously became lost in the ensuing moves of my career, as evidenced by my well-deserved apology to Dedman for a lapse in memory that resulted in mischaracterizing his fine work. Mistakes are always with us. It’s how we choose to deal with them that reveals how deeply we value truth over ego.
—–––––•–––––—Staff columnist Mike Masterson is the former editor of three Arkansas daily newspapers.
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