Philadelphia inquirer owns up to headline mistake

Published on June 27, 2020 by Mollie Muchna | Reading Time: < 1 minute

Journalists are human, which means we sometimes make mistakes. But it’s up to us to own up to those mistakes and ask the audience to help hold us accountable to doing better in the future. This is exactly what the Philadelphia inquirer did after they wrote a headline that suggested an equivalence between the loss of buildings and the lives of Black Americans. In a column addressing the issue, editors at the paper called the headline unacceptable and shared how the paper’s editing and headline writing process had been working, and how they were adjusting it in order to avoid similar situations in the future. “In addition to our readers and the Philadelphia community, we apologize to the many employees of the Philadelphia Inquirer, whose work selling advertising, printing the paper and developing Inquirer.com enables our journalism,” the editors wrote. “We hear you and will continue to listen as we work to improve.” This work was done independently from Trusting News but embodies the work we do.

Mollie Muchna

mollie@trustingnews.org | + posts

Project manager Mollie Muchna (she/her) has spent the last 10 years working in audience and engagement journalism in local newsrooms across the Southwest. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, where she is also an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona’s School of Journalism. She can be reached at mollie@trustingnews.org and on Twitter @molliemuchna.