It’s noteworthy that on Friday the County Press had to issue a “Sincere and Unequivocal Apology” to Cllr Ian Stephens – the sort of thing newspapers have to publish to avoid legal action being taken against them for defamation of character.
It apologised for Charlotte Hofton’s council chamber report in the previous week’s County Press paper (pg 37 3.Feb.2012). Those who read the original piece may also have been shocked by her description of Cllr Ian Stephens’ presentation during the “State of the Island” debate.
Alongside what we thought of as an attempted character assassination of Cllr Stephens, we were pretty surprised that someone with as much experience as Hoffers (our affectionate nickname for Charlotte) didn’t appear to understand that the State of the Island debate was something built into the Island’s constitution, not something “dreamed up” by Cllr Stephens, as she put it.
The CP apology
Back to the County Press’ “Sincere and Unequivocal Apology”.
On page 35 of Friday’s edition (10, Feb 2012), underneath a long letter from Cllr Stephens where he lays out his thoughts, which is bordered in black to draw attention to it, there’s a statement from the paper’s Editor …
“The IW County Press would like to offer its sincere and unequivocal apologies to Cllr Stephens for any offence inadvertently caused by the article. To be fair to Charlotte, some of the “misunderstandings” were the result of editing errors, which may have meant that it was not clear the contents of the notes and the views expressed therein were NOT those of Cllr Stephens, not did they refer to him.
Similarly, we apologise to Cllr Stephens if it was not clear that the criticism and comments in the article about the “report” was directed at the style and content of the notes, and not at Cllr Stephens personally.
We certainly did not wish to infer any personal or professional criticism of Cllr Stephens.
The general tone of the article was light hearted and satirical but nevertheless we are very sorry indeed if the wrong impression was given and we apologise unreservedly for any offence caused to Cllr Stephens or others.
Several letters were also published last week, defending Cllr Stephens from Cllr Mazillius’ (sic) comments.
Public not apologised to
Charlotte Hofton’s article is not only rude about Cllr Stephens but to the seventy plus members of the public that gave their time at the State of the Island meeting the Saturday before.
We note that the County Press editor doesn’t apologise to those members of the public.
Has this happened before?
It’s the first occasion that we can remember seeing this kind of thing in the CP. Can you recall another time?
