PressEthic

On Monday, Editor & Publisher reported that two North Carolina newspapers have issued official apologies for supporting race riots that occurred across the state over a hundred years ago.

Joe Strupp for E&P reported:

"The apologies, in The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer of Raleigh, last Friday coincided with a 16-page special report on the racial conflicts that boiled over 108 years ago. The tab section, jointly produced by both papers, chronicled events that led to the riots and anti-black activities, including efforts by local newspapers to support supremacists and seek the removal of anti-segregationists from office.



Editorial page editors at the papers, both currently owned by The McClatchy Company, said the timing for an apology was right. 'We simply came to the determination that to fully acknowledge our role was appropriate,' Steve Ford, editorial page editor for the News & Observer, told E&P today. 'Once you do that, it came to seem to us that an apology was a natural step to take.'

The News & Observer editorial, titled 'A Painful Past,' noted that the paper's part in the racist efforts of 1898 were 'not a history we can undo.' But it stated "this newspaper was a leader in that propaganda effort under editor and publisher Josephus Daniels'."

Strupp also noted that while saying sorry the wrong doings committed under totally different staff and ownership seems “hollow,” the effort was worth it for the current staffs. Orage Quarles, the News & Observer's publisher told E&P that: “it is part of our history and there are numerous employees here who had no idea of our role. It as like a giant shadow hanging over it, and we are done with it.”

I’d hate to think that such a gesture as completely self-serving on behalf of the two newspapers. Yeah, it’s good thing to acknowledge and apologize for mistakes made in the past, but what’s the point if the staffs own editors do so largely (it seems) for the sake of a clear conscious? I’m also confused about the issue of timing. Why is apologizing now any better than, lets say, 10 or 20 years ago? I guess that ultimately, effort was better than nothing, not for the staff, but for informed readers who might have otherwise had no idea of the papers' histories.