A story on Page A1 in some editions Saturday incorrectly reported that a jury found against Dr. Gary Thompson and Dr. Michael Turner in connection with a 1998 child abuse case. The jury actually found in favor of both doctors. The story to the right reports the correct information. The Star apologizes for the error.
This correction/apology resulted in a March 16 column by the paper’s editor and vice president:
A week ago a headline at the top of our front page was clear and to the ipoint: “Physicians lose child abuse suit.” A secondary headline added that: “Plaintiff awarded $400,000 in case alleging doctors didn’t report abuse.”
Unfortunately, the main headline, as was the story under it, was as inaccurate as it was clear. A jury held Methodist Hospital responsible for not identifying and reporting suspected abuse of an 11-month-old child who was returned to his mother and later beaten to death by the mother’s boyfriend. The jury ruled that the two physicians involved in the case, Dr. Gary Thompson and Dr. Michael Turner, were not liable.
No question, it was a very bad error.
When we become aware of errors we correct them on Page 2 of our first, or “A,” news section. We also append the correction to our archived stories and rewrite those stories to correct the error, to ensure that an error isn’t repeated.
Some situations require more action on our part, however, and this was one of them…
Thanks, Rick!
Due to massive computer problems, several news stories planned for Sunday’s newspaper did not appear this morning. The problems, related to computer storage issues, required us to reprint some stories from Saturday’s newspaper, and leave out stories we had planned to publish.
