Gila Courier and blogger/journalistic integrity

by David Safier

The Gila Courier, a right wing blog/news site (take your pick) printed what it thought was a version of an op ed Lisa Suarez published in the Star saying people should vote for Prop 200. The version on the Courier site had Suarez making a comment implying City Manager Mike Letcher drinks too much.

Jim Nintzel at the Weekly caught it and got an email from Suarez saying she didn't write that version.

The Gila Courier made a mistake for reasons that may be perfectly innocent. Then again, maybe it had ulterior motives. I have no idea either way.

So what did the Courier do? It took the version of the op ed down from the website without explanation or apology, at least not one anyone can find.

Why does this sound so like the current conservative mindset to me? Make things up, lie, misstate, misquote, but never let them see you retract or apologize.

By way of comparison:

• Today I received an email from the Vice Principal at Sonoran Science Academy, Broadway, saying I had made an error in a post a few weeks back. I said the school had been around for awhile when in fact it opened its doors in August, 2008. Its main school was the one that's been open awhile. It wasn't a big or an important mistake, but I went back to the post, crossed out the mistaken phrase (but left it in so people could see the error), inserted a corrected phrase and put an apology for the error in brackets.
• Last weekend, I wrote a semi-contrite post about a suspicion I had regarding a Goldwater Institute survey. I had never posted about my suspicions, but I figured, since I go after G.I. so often, I should be honest when a suspicion I have is wrong. It made me feel better, like I wasn't hiding anything.
• Last night Tedski at R-cubed made a statement, then found out this morning it was wrong. He got rid of the old post and replaced it with one that restated his mistake, explained why it was wrong and ended with, "I regret the error."
• Tonight, Rachel Maddow took a few minutes on her MSNBC show to say that a statement she had made on an earlier broadcast was wrong. It wasn't a big mistake, but she took a good minute detailing what she had said before and why it was in error. She apologized. I saw her make a similar apology once before in the last week or two.

That's what you do. You own up to your mistakes openly and clearly. It actually adds to your credibility. Lefty bloggers and journalists do it all the time. But conservatives seem to believe in George Orwell's "memory hole" from 1984, where you dump old information you no longer want people to know about in the hole, and Poof! it never existed.

Irony alert. In the tradition of "Fox News: Fair and Balanced," Gila Courier calls itself "Arizona's leading political news site." Humility is another trait, along with honesty, that appears to be in short supply on that side of the political spectrum.