Valid Complaints on Story about Berkeley Balcony Collapse

By 
  
My office fielded hundreds of complaints Wednesday from readers who are – quite understandably – upset about an article that went online Tuesday night.
The article concerns a terrible balcony collapse in Berkeley, Calif., that killed young people from Ireland, working in the United States as part of the J-1 visa program.
The complaints center on descriptions of the program as “not just a source of aspiration, but a source of embarrassment for Ireland, marked by a series of high-profile episodes involving drunken partying and the wrecking of apartments in places like San Francisco and Santa Barbara.”
Those who wrote and tweeted called this, and other passages in the story, “victim-blaming.” The real problem, they said, was structural defects in the building. And they objected to depicting the young people as extreme partyers, in part because it perpetuates a stereotype. A former member of the J-1 program, Brendan O’Sullivan of North Carolina, wrote to me, “The only thing missing” from the story was “a picture of a pint and a kid with red hair falling down drunk.”
The reaction from Ireland and from Irish-Americans and others was intense, as expressed in this tweet:
By morning, editors and reporters were well aware of the storm. I talked to the national editor, Alison Mitchell, whose staff wrote and edited the story.  She told me that she regrets that readers believe The Times set out to blame the victims, which was never the intention.
If she had the chance to edit it now, she said, she would have removed some key passages from the story, including the one mentioned above. “In hindsight, I wouldn’t have had that second paragraph,” she said. The Times will be looking into the structural problems of the building; some readers pointed out to me a Los Angeles Times story that did that.
I also had an email from one of the reporters on the story, Adam Nagourney. He wrote:
This is what we – I – was trying to do, and I mean this as by way of explanation and not excuse. By the time I came on the story, it had already been on our site for five hours or so and we wanted to do something to move it forward. The idea for a second-day story was to focus on the J-1 visa program, and the number of Irish students who, through the program, came here in the summer; I think that was a relatively new thought to us and many of our readers.
There are obviously positive aspects to the program, which has been a great resource for thousands of young Irish students, as well as negative ones. Looking back, I had the balance wrong; I put too much emphasis on the negative aspects, and they were too high in my story. That did not become clear to me until I got a distraught email from a reader right after the story posted. I made a minor change in the story to try to address that, but it did not go far enough.
Do I think that the program – as well as the problems associated with it – are fair game for a news story? Yes. But there was a more sensitive way to tell the story. I absolutely was not looking to in any way appear to be blaming the victims, or causing pain in this awful time for their families and friends. I feel very distressed at having added to their anguish.
My take: The thrust of the story was insensitive, and the reaction to it understandable. An examination of the building’s structure, rather than the behavior of young people in the J-1 program, would have been a more appropriate focus for a second-day story.
I know that editors and reporters at The Times have heard, and understand, the valid complaints that have been raised. It is not The Times’s policy to take a published story off its website, but the story would clearly have been written and edited differently now.
I know, too, from talking to a number of Times journalists, that many feel deep sympathy for all who are affected, especially the families of the young people who lost their lives.
The Times ran two letters to the editor online on Wednesday in response to the backlash. And Eileen Murphy, the paper’s spokeswoman, made this statement, echoing what Ms. Mitchell and Mr. Nagourney told me directly:
This piece was a second-day story following yesterday’s news story of the collapse. It was intended to explain in greater detail why these young Irish students were in the U.S. We understand and agree that some of the language in the piece could be interpreted as insensitive, particularly in such close proximity to this tragedy. It was never our intention to blame the victims and we apologize if the piece left that impression. We will continue to cover this story and report on the young people who lost their lives.
A small postscript: I explained several times on Twitter today, and will do so again here, that, as public editor, I don’t write or edit Times stories, or have the power to print a correction or editor’s note. I’m not a part of the newsroom structure, and I don’t speak for the institution, but only for myself. My role is to consider reader complaints, report on them internally, and sometimes comment on them publicly, as I’m doing here. In that role (and as a mother), I can say not only that I believe many of the complaints were valid, but also that I’m very sorry for the pain the story caused.