Post by Yona Maro on Aug 28, 2005 8:10:23 GMT -5
Our Word - Our Apology
It was a heart-rending story--a blonde waif, her mother dead, entrusted to the care of a family friend while her father fought with the 101st Airborne in Iraq. The youngster was intelligent, friendly and engaging, and developed close bonds with many of the newsroom staff.
Then a week ago came the news that her father had been killed in Iraq.
Every war casualty leaves a trail of pain, but the story of a 10-year-old girl losing her only parent to the war is particularly poignant, and the Chicago Tribune showed interest.
In the course of checking out the details, a troubling problem appeared: The story wasn't true. What began as a nightmarish possibility became impossible to deny. There was no record with the Department of Defense of the death.
The father who was called Dan Kennings was not killed in Iraq. We checked with central command in Baghdad. There was no Dan Kennings in the 101st Airborne. No Dan Kennings in the entire Army.
We checked with Cathy Gramling, media relations officer at Fort Campbell, Ky., who in turn checked with the Army Human Resources Command.
"We cannot find a record of a Dan Kennings on active duty or having been killed in Iraq," Gramling said.
She directed us to a Web site maintained by the military, listing all the casualties from Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom and the attack on the Pentagon. No Dan Kennings.
We had been duped.
Not only was he not in the military, we could not verify he existed at all. Suddenly, everything about this story was in question.
Over the course of a year and a half, we published news stories, columns and letters to the editor about Dan Kennings and his daughter Kodee. All of them were rich in real human emotion, and all provided moving details in the life of a young girl trying to live her life without her parents. They portrayed a precocious child, fiercely proud of her father's military service.
Each one of these stories, columns and letters contained an essential inaccuracy -- but when we published them we believed them to be true.
How could this happen?
We blew it.
There is no pleasant way to put it. We didn't check the facts carefully. We believed what we were told without verifying. We weren't as skeptical as we are supposed to be. We were fooled by a little girl with a cute smile, surrounded by a group of adults who acted the hoax with her.
We published unverified assertions, and they turned out to be false. For that, we apologize to our readers.
The basis of journalism is truth. Not partial truth, but 100 percent truth on every page, in every story. As it says in our mission statement, we are committed to being a trusted source of news. In this case, we failed.
Admitting this, however, is not enough.
We also retract all the stories and commentary concerning Kodee and Dan Kennings, people we now know never existed, and we pledge to redouble our efforts to regain and keep your trust.
It was a heart-rending story--a blonde waif, her mother dead, entrusted to the care of a family friend while her father fought with the 101st Airborne in Iraq. The youngster was intelligent, friendly and engaging, and developed close bonds with many of the newsroom staff.
Then a week ago came the news that her father had been killed in Iraq.
Every war casualty leaves a trail of pain, but the story of a 10-year-old girl losing her only parent to the war is particularly poignant, and the Chicago Tribune showed interest.
In the course of checking out the details, a troubling problem appeared: The story wasn't true. What began as a nightmarish possibility became impossible to deny. There was no record with the Department of Defense of the death.
The father who was called Dan Kennings was not killed in Iraq. We checked with central command in Baghdad. There was no Dan Kennings in the 101st Airborne. No Dan Kennings in the entire Army.
We checked with Cathy Gramling, media relations officer at Fort Campbell, Ky., who in turn checked with the Army Human Resources Command.
"We cannot find a record of a Dan Kennings on active duty or having been killed in Iraq," Gramling said.
She directed us to a Web site maintained by the military, listing all the casualties from Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom and the attack on the Pentagon. No Dan Kennings.
We had been duped.
Not only was he not in the military, we could not verify he existed at all. Suddenly, everything about this story was in question.
Over the course of a year and a half, we published news stories, columns and letters to the editor about Dan Kennings and his daughter Kodee. All of them were rich in real human emotion, and all provided moving details in the life of a young girl trying to live her life without her parents. They portrayed a precocious child, fiercely proud of her father's military service.
Each one of these stories, columns and letters contained an essential inaccuracy -- but when we published them we believed them to be true.
How could this happen?
We blew it.
There is no pleasant way to put it. We didn't check the facts carefully. We believed what we were told without verifying. We weren't as skeptical as we are supposed to be. We were fooled by a little girl with a cute smile, surrounded by a group of adults who acted the hoax with her.
We published unverified assertions, and they turned out to be false. For that, we apologize to our readers.
The basis of journalism is truth. Not partial truth, but 100 percent truth on every page, in every story. As it says in our mission statement, we are committed to being a trusted source of news. In this case, we failed.
Admitting this, however, is not enough.
We also retract all the stories and commentary concerning Kodee and Dan Kennings, people we now know never existed, and we pledge to redouble our efforts to regain and keep your trust.