Posted on 04/08/2005 12:25:03 PM PDT by Dan from Michigan
Mitch Albom apologizes to readers for error in column
4/7/2005, 11:55 p.m. ET
The Associated Press
DETROIT (AP) — Best-selling author Mitch Albom apologized Thursday to readers of the Detroit Free Press for incorrectly reporting that two former Michigan State players attended Saturday's Michigan State-North Carolina NCAA basketball game. He said he wrote the column before the game took place.
Albom said he based the column on what former Michigan State players Mateen Cleaves and Jason Richardson told him they planned to do. He said he wrote the column in the past tense, as if the events already had happened, because the column had to be filed Friday afternoon — a day before the game — but would appear Sunday.
The column said the players, who now play in the NBA, "sat in the stands, in their MSU clothing, and rooted on their alma mater." It said Richardson flew in by private plane and that Cleaves flew commercial. The column quoted the players about the differences between life in college and in the NBA.
The Free Press said in a correction Thursday that Cleaves and Richardson were not, in fact, at the game. Albom had interviewed the two last Thursday and Friday about their plans, which changed because of scheduling conflicts, the paper said.
The Free Press said the section in which the column appeared was printed before the game.
In a letter addressed to readers that appeared on the front page of Friday's editions, Carole Leigh Hutton, publisher and editor of the Free Press, said the paper is "undertaking a thorough review of the situation, as is our policy.
"We will report on that investigation just as we do with other investigations you read about in the Free Press."
"As a newspaper, our credibility is paramount," Hutton said in the letter, in which she also noted that Albom "has built an unparalleled reputation in 20 years as a Free Press columnist."
Hutton's letter also directed readers to a Web site outlining the paper's ethics policy.
In a telephone interview Thursday, Hutton said the incident was "a colossal error in judgment that should have been caught before it ever got to the paper."
"Inexplicably, it didn't," she said.
Albom, host of a nationally syndicated radio talk show and author of the best-selling books "Tuesdays With Morrie" and "The Five People You Meet in Heaven," said in the column Thursday he should not have assumed that Cleaves and Richardson would be at the game.
"You can't write that something happened that didn't, even if it's just who sat in the stands," he wrote.
"While our deadlines would have required some weird writing — something like, 'By the time you read this, if Mateen and Jason stuck to their plans, they would have sat in the stands for Saturday's game' — it should have been done. We have high standards at this newspaper, and I have high standards for myself. We — the editors and I — got caught in an assumption that shouldn't have happened. It won't again."
The paper's correction apologized for misleading readers.
"We do not present as fact events that have not occurred," it said.
And the left-wingers wonder why the so-called mainstream media has lost so much credibility.
Haven't even read anything from him in years. Just hope he really did take John Salley to a hockey game.
"We do not present as fact events that have not occurred," it said.
Actually, you just admitted you did.
Sounds like what should have happened to many a MSM reporters' careers'...
I used to like to read Mitch's sports columns in the freep, but haven't in some time. I think I caught his radio show immediately after 911. Didn't care for a lot of his non-sports related writing, though.
Furthermore, if it's really true that columns that appear on Sunday have to be filed on Friday, what that tells me is that this sort of thing must happen a lot, and not just from Albom, but from lots of guys. I wonder how many other pieces written in the past tense ahead of time have turned out later on to not have actually happened that just sort of slipped through the cracks that we don't even really know about.
"Didn't care for a lot of his non-sports related writing, though."
As far as what comes out of his mouth, he is a perfect clone of alan colmes......content and technique both. Ignores known facts in order to tell the story he wishes, and embellishes it with inflection and "questions".
thoroughly typical liberal puke in every way.
OK, here's something to think about. In Peter Singer's book questioning Bush's morality, in one section he said that Bush had a "child-like" ethical view.
As proof, he told a story that once Bush was recording his radio address in Washington before flying to California for the weekend. Someone had written the script to say "I speak to you from California", and Bush complained that this would be a lie since he was in Washington.
Singer claimed that only a simpleton would think that it would be wrong to write ahead of time something that you "know" will be true later.
This article shows the end result of such muddled liberal thinking.
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