Regret the Error

This probably would have made our year-end round-up if we had seen it in time. Several Italian newspapers ran front page apologies this week after they falsely accused a Tunisian immigrant who had been recently released from prison of murdering his wife, son, mother-in-law and neighbor. In reality, he was out of country at the time of the crimes. From a Reuters report:

Italian newspapers offered a
rare front-page apology Wednesday for accusing an immigrant
from Tunisia recently freed from prison of the gruesome murder
of his wife, son, mother-in-law and a neighbor.
After the victims had their throats slit and their house
burned Monday in the northern town of Erba, the media pointed
the finger at a Tunisian jailed for drug offences and released
under a mass pardon.
Right-wing politicians pinned blame on the center-left
government for letting out Azouz Marzouk and about 25,000 other
inmates in recent months to reduce prison overcrowding.
However, Marzouk’s grieving father-in-law Carlo Castagna,
who lost his wife, daughter and grandson, cleared the Tunisian,
saying he was on a trip to his homeland at the time.
Some papers that had run headlines like "Monster!"
apologized.
"When truth is the murder victim," wrote conservative daily
Il Giornale on its front page. "It was sensationalism," said
the left-leaning La Repubblica, which a day earlier accused
Marzouk by name of "murdering and burning three women and his
son."
The respected daily Corriere della Sera printed a
front-page editorial acknowledging that it, like the rest of
the media, had "unjustly echoed the thesis that the Tunisian
was guilty of massacring his family in Como province."
Corriere said it was "always wrong to create monsters. And
also to make a monster out of a law," referring to the pardon
that parliament passed in July amid huge political controversy.
None of the newspapers mentioned any fear of being sued for
libel and it is common for the Italian media to openly
speculate about named individuals’ guilt in criminal cases.
Marzouk, 36, was serving a four-year drugs sentence when
freed by the pardon in July. Visiting his parents in Tunis, he
saw the news of the murder of his wife, two-year-old son,
mother-in-law and a neighbor on television Monday and flew back
to Italy the following day…