Since when was the word "Apostate" a bad word. As many of you know, the Daily Universe (a paper featured on this blog regularly) printed a picture of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in Monday's edition. However, due to human error, the caption read "Quorum of the Twelve Apostates" I couldn't help but laugh when I saw this. Not only because it was a major mistake for the paper of a church owned university to make, but because these types of mistakes have been made for years. I guess the DU's policy of "overworking" their copy editors over the years finally caught up to them.
Now, I think the way the DU handled the mistake was good. They replaced the papers, reprinted the story, and explained how it happened to other news outlet. Given this openness I was surprised that the editorial board's apology printed recently did not even include the word apostate. Instead they wrote:
"As many of you are now aware, The Daily Universe ran a photo caption Monday that misspelled the word “apostle” as another word that has a very different and opposite meaning."
For being so open about the mistake, why didn't they identify the word as "apostate"? For all we know, they could have used any of the following words: renegade, fugitive, or absconder. According to the apology we have no idea what they are apologizing for.
Is this a big deal? no. But if the DU was committed to being completely transparent, they should have used the word. Last I checked, "Apostate" was not a four letter word.
OK, I'm done now.
5 comments:
But they've never claimed to be a transparent organization. Ah, the beauty of having a student newspaper that's published so frequently. Makes me wonder what those student journalists are going to do with their degrees, though, with all the papers closing up shop now.
good point - I always thought being evasive about things always made it a bigger deal than it really is. Hey, I'm a grown up, I've dealt with grown up things (I even know what Apostate means)
I agree with Shara--by not naming what was said they made a bigger deal out of it. People's curiosity will be piqued and they'll look into it. Also, printing corrections is only helpful and professional when said correction contains enough information to know what the paper is talking about *without* scouring back issues. And let's face it, I'm pretty sure the 12 all laughed when they heard about the mistake. Christ-like people have better things to do than get easily offended.
In response to Rob, they did claim to be transparent and open about the problem.
The DU sounds interesting...Maybe they should look to the Utah Statesman Police Blotter for the most professional, cutting edge journalism out there.
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