The Sarasota Herald-Tribune made a mistake in publishing a column defending the Proud Boys, the newspaper's executive editor said on Monday.
Jennifer Orsi apologized to readers, writing in an editor's note that the newspaper "erred in publishing a guest column on our opinion page and website with the headline 'Attacking Proud Boys does disservice to caring parents,' " adding that "our editorial process failed to keep this column from being published as it appeared, which did not meet our standards."
The column defending the Proud Boys was published on Sunday, and the newspaper took it down from its website after receiving considerable criticism from readers, The Hill reported.
The opinion piece was responding to a June 24 guest column that criticized a member of the local school board for alleged connections to a local organization of the group.
Orsi said that the June 24 column "had criticized the author of Sunday's opinion piece, and an editor felt it fair to give her a chance to respond."
The executive editor stressed that "we strive to provide a broad range of views from our community, including opinions in opposition to those of our editorial board. However, the Herald-Tribune opinion page will not provide a forum for support of the Proud Boys, an extremist group that promotes white nationalist views, has been labeled a terrorist group by two countries and has top members under indictment on charges of seditious conspiracy in the January 6 Capitol attack."
Orsi stressed that "to do so is antithetical to our values as an organization and is outside of our responsibility to provide a fair forum for different points of view."
She added that the paper would from now on add an additional, higher level review "of the process for accepting and editing guest columns for publication."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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