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posted by janrinok on Saturday May 23 2015, @06:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the mea-culpa dept.

Janrinok writes:

Apology To Microsoft

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.

Apology to sigma

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.

Our Role

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

 
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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @06:23AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @06:23AM (#187090)
    To those of you just tuning in: Back when the Michael Brown story first broke on SN the above AC was correctly labeled as a bigot. Basically his position was that the victim deserved death and his evidence was that he has seen too many movies in the 90's. This individual never disputed the details provided in the various stories that SN posted, for example he never said "This is untrue, here's why", he just stuck to his guns based on 10 seconds of video that took place not even immediately before the shooting. He has had a chip on his shoulder ever since. To this day he doesn't understand why the Grand Jury's lack of indictment of Officer Wilson hasn't exonerated him. So what does he do? He brings it up every chance he can get so he can bait the people that have butt-hurt him into an argument. He has actually made a list of specific people he's upset at, I'm surprised we haven't seen it lately. I'm sure it's sitting in a text file somewhere on his hard-drive right now. Maybe one day he'll finally get that argument he wants and find a way to declare victory. In the mean time we can expect this to keep reoccurring.

    "We were wrong about Microsoft!" "I was mistreated in a discussion about Michael Brown!"
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