Janrinok writes:
On Friday, we published a story, submitted by sigma, alleging that Microsoft had attempted to blackmail the UK Government in order to prevent the adoption of UK policy supporting open document standards. Having looked more closely at the linked material provided, the word blackmail is not used but appears only in the submission that we received. As the editor of that particular story I am personally responsible for not having checked the sources sufficiently well and for subsequently releasing the story. I wish to apologise, publicly and unreservedly, for any suggestion that Microsoft attempted to blackmail the UK government. They did not, nor does the accusation stand up to any scrutiny. We have edited the title to prevent any further misunderstanding by our community or others and I hope that this action and my apology to Microsoft is sufficient to atone for my mistake.
The editor's role includes that of trying to look at each story from both sides to provide a balanced approach. We are not here to support one particular view in preference to another but to provide material that will inspire discussion between members of our community. I published the story that sigma submitted, but attempted to balance it with the alternative view that suggested it was not specifically a Microsoft trait to defend one's business and that it could be argued that they were also attempting to protect their British workforce. However, I did not make it clear where sigma's comments ended and where my editing began, although I did add an Editor's Comment explaining that the story had been edited and that not all comments were those of the submitter. sigma has, quite justifiably, objected to this action and I must, therefore, apologise to him personally. I do apologise to sigma, again publicly and unreservedly, for any changes that I made to the submission that he feels reflect badly upon him.
This was most certainly not my best piece of work and, of course, I must also apologise to the community. The editors do, however, have to edit stories; members of the community should not expect their submissions to be a platform for their personal views. Some stories require more editing than others to be suitable for the front page. In this instance, I made a mistake. We will always try to find a balanced approach to any story that needs it, as described in the Editing Process.
As I have already said, I take full responsibility for the stories that I release, including the one arising from sigma's submission. We value each and every submission, even those that do not make it to publication however, we do ask that submitters do not suggest events or actions that are not backed up by the source material, or are not easily verifiable by other means.
janrinok
Editor
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 23 2015, @11:12PM
Things were good at first here. But ever since the Michael Brown incident, and the subsequent reporting of it here, I've found the quality of the stories to have gone downhill. I focus on that particular incident, because it's one where it was clear from the very beginning that the reporting here was pathetically bad. The submissions here painted it as a situation involving police brutality, when the obvious reality was that Michael Brown had just robbed a shop, violently attacked the cashier, tried to take a police officer's gun, and then charged at that officer in yet another violent physical attack. I mean, we had very clear footage of Brown attacking the cashier just minutes before he was shot, yet people here still proclaimed his innocence, and tore the police officer a new one just because this officer sensibly engaged in totally reasonable and justifiable self defense. The only one engaging in brutality was Michael Brown. Despite how obvious this situation was from the very beginning, the reporting here was just flat out awful. By setting the bar so low, it allowed other submissions with awful reporting to end up on the front page, eventually leading to incidents like this one.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @06:07AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @12:10PM
The "video" playing in your head is not actually a video of what actually happened.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @05:08PM
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @06:23AM
"We were wrong about Microsoft!" "I was mistreated in a discussion about Michael Brown!"