Posted on 01/03/2003 5:40:27 AM PST by EllaMinnow
Democrat reporter suspended following offensive e-mail DEMOCRAT STAFF REPORT
Political writer Bill Cotterell has been suspended from the Tallahassee Democrat for offensive e-mail remarks to a reader, Executive Editor John Winn Miller announced Thursday.
The one-week suspension without pay lasts until next Friday, Miller said.
In a statement, Miller said: "On behalf of the Tallahassee Democrat, I apologize to all of our readers, and most especially, to readers and members of the Islamic faith everywhere, for the intemperate e-mail comments of political writer/columnist Bill Cotterell. They absolutely do not represent the views and sensitivities of this newspaper. Worse, they run counter to many of the values we hold dearest, among them tolerance, diversity and inclusiveness."
Cotterell, a veteran reporter with 35 years in the news business, also apologized, saying that his comments were "grossly inappropriate."
Cotterell's e-mail responded to a reader upset with a cartoon by Doug Marlette that many thought was insulting to Muslims. The cartoon appeared briefly on the Democrat's Web site but was not published in the paper.
In his response, Cotterell criticized most Arab nations for not "getting over" the creation of Israel and making peace.
"OK, they can squat around the camel-dung fire and grumble about it, or they can put their bottoms in the air five times a day and pray for deliverance; that's their business," Cotterell wrote in his e-mail. "And I don't give a damn if Israel kills a few in collateral damage while defending itself. So be it."
His private e-mail was forwarded to the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and posted on its Web site. That prompted hundreds of e-mails and phone calls of protest to the Democrat about his remarks.
"Any journalist has a right to his or her political and religious views, but when those views are expressed in such bigoted terms, it raises questions about a media outlet's journalistic balance and objectivity," CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper said in a statement posted to ISLAM-INFONET, an e-mail list-serv moderated by CAIR.
Cotterell said that although he was responding to a reader who had offended him with her comments, "I should not have used disrespectful and insulting language in responding to her. I should not have become personally provoked."
It's a religion of crybabies.
Close, it's a non-religion of retards with all apologies going to non-islime retards.
When I hear or see more rag heads apologise for the last 20+ years of terrorism by their brothers, sisters then and only then will I reconsider my opinion. Based upon the comic book koran, it is hard to associate the term "religion" with them. THAT is an insult to all other religions.
Fine, direct prose, but it breaks the bland rule.
One wonders if his response had agreed with the upset reader, and then gone on to denounce the U.S., thereby "insulting" Americans, if he would have been suspended.
So what's the problem? Accuracy in reporting is always admired.
Now there's an oxymoronically named newspaper.
Spot on! It seems to me that if the Arabs insist on throwing a half-century long hissy fit over the existence of Israel, they should at least accept the attendent consequences. But I guess that is expecting way too much.
I sent the following to Bill...
The Tallahassee Democrat published Sharon Rauch's "Homosexuality is an easy scapegoat for churches" but finds your private non-published e-mail and dougmarlette.com cartoon offensive, this kind of thinking is one of the main reasons I don't subscribe to their waste-paper, to think it's ok to suspend their best reporter and blast Christianity but not Islam, the managers and editors of the Democrat must be afraid to offend those whose kin kill us or those that are intolerant of us, why else would they allow Rauch's "my view" column to be published and not Marlette's Cartoon?
keep the faith...rto
yeah, right. that's how clinton was unmasked for what he was and driven from the white house.
dep
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