A sports reporter for The Flint Journal and MLive.com has issued an apology and correction after he included unfounded speculation in a Tuesday report about a local basketball league.
Here’s the apology from reporter Ross Maghielse:
In a story that was posted this morning, “Tuesday’s Flint-area prep basketball forecast,” I mentioned that there was “speculation” that the Flint Metro League was “disbanding.” Although it was stated as speculation and not fact, it was completely off base and should not have been included.
The information that it came from was confused with changes that already took place with the Big 9 conference and Saginaw Valley along with potential changes with a different league not associated with the Flint area or the Flint Metro League.
As a new reporter to the Flint area, I confused the leagues and information into a small snippet of a larger post. The story has been edited with a correction and retraction embedded in it. My apologies for giving the appearance of credibility to misguided and confused speculation regarding the Flint Metro League.
I give Maghielse credit for offering a clear explanation of how he made the mistake, and for admitting he was wrong to include baseless speculation in a report. (Where were his editors?) He also published his apology/correction the same day as the offending piece. That’s all good.
One big problem, however, is the original story has been scrubbed off the site. The URL now sends users to the site index page. Editors should have removed the offending statement from the article and added the correction/apology. Or redirected the old URL to the correction/apology.
Maghielse had also tweeted a link to his original report:
Tuesday’s Flint-area prep basketball forecast: End of football means spotlight shifts to the hardcourt bit.ly/yqRbsv @flintjournal
— Ross Maghielse (@Maghielse) February 7, 2012
I didn’t see a tweet to the correction/apology, which would help close the loop for his followers.
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