More fake news...about the Fake News. ABC News did not apologize. Someone in the employ of ABC News issued a weasel-worded “correction” that they hope might give them cover for malfeasance and/or gross negligence. (My money is on deliberate malfeasance.)
“ABC News regrets the error” is not an apology. It has all the sincerity of the automated prompts on a Comcast phone tree. An actual apology acknowledges the wrongness of an act or omission and the harm it has caused. An apology directs itself to the offended parties, along with some gesture of intent to do better or to rectify the wrong.
Of course, in real life, decent people know this instinctively. They also know that this is, at best, lawyerly damage control. This unsigned statement, written in the third person by an unknown party, sticks in the craw and compounds the offense. An anonymously written, terse mumble of “regret” for unspecified actions of unknown, unnamed others means exactly nothing. But it’s very telling in its own way. They’re taking the Fake News equivalent of the Fifth.