You Can't Un-Ring a Bell

In his distant misty past, Your Humble Blogger was a student newspaper adviser. It was a surprisingly challenging job. Perhaps the most difficult part was the ethical problems that would inevitably pop up.

This recent email is a classic student newspaper ethical (and to some degree legal) dilemma. YHB will edit out a few names, but otherwise the email below is what was sent by a student newspaper adviser on another California community college campus...

Fri, May 11, 2012 at 8:36 AM, XXX wrote:

All,

I am hoping you can give me some help. A student in my intermediate newswriting class who also serves as our photo editor wrote an opinion piece for The XXX on gay bullying. He cited examples like the death of Tyler Clemente and wrote about his own experiences of being the target of this kind of bullying. He never said in the piece that he was gay; just that he had been targeted.

The story was signed off by the EIC and put in the server for the section editor to read it and to lay it out on his opinion pages.

When the paper came out Wednesday, the words - "I have been the target of bullying - especially gay bullying: were changed to "I have been the target of gay bullying especially because I am gay.

The writer has not come out to his family or friends. He told me that it has destroyed his life. He doesn't want to come back to school. He has threatened suing the student, has reported the incident to student life, and had to have a crisis team from our health services called in. He want a retraction printed (actually asked that it be on the front cover) and wants the editor fired. I explained libel law, procedures, of editors being fired, of how corrections/retractions are dealt with, but he is not satisfied.

I immediately called an editorial board meeting of all the editors. The opinion editor was devastated. He said he could not imagine ever adding words to an opinion but said he would step down because it's his pages. The EIC then said that they were having problems with layout and design and that he may have done it without thinking if the words had been cut off.

The editors will of course print a correction in the next issue, but they are all convinced that this was not malicious but an accident.

Not sure where to go with this. The student will not accept a correction. He wants to see the editors punished.

What would you do in a situation like this?

Thanks in advance for your input.

Questions...

•How is this more of a print problem than an online problem?
•In this case, is gatekeeping the cause, the solution, or both?
•Which of the following questions should guide an ethical solution to this problem?
•What solution will do the greatest good for the greatest number of people?
•What would be a moderate solution, one that neither does too much or too little?
•How would you want to be treated if you were the student who was apparently outed?
•Should this be treated like any other error made in the student newspaper?