University Paper Fires Writer, Orders Bias Training After Nonwhite Student Is Misnamed – Opinion

The University of Maryland’s student newspaper is apologizing for personal injuries it recently caused.

As described, an article’s abnormalities were “inexcusable.”

The Diamondback announced this via an end of story correction on Friday.

Meghana Kotraiah was elected speaker of the Student Government Association.

However, tragedy struck when Ryan White, a Diamondback contributor, misplaced her moniker.

In fact, he confused Meghana Kotraiah’s name with that of Madhulika Nallani.

To be fair, the point of the piece wasn’t a change in the SGA. The piece was about funding for a new center in the community.

Ryan, however, was not able to accurately identify Meghana.

A Diamondback addendum was used to attempt damage control:

An error in the reporting of Madhulika Nallani’s election as speaker for SGA has led to this incorrect version. Meghana Kotraiah has been elected the new SGA speaker. This story has been updated.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough.

The paper published a separate statement.

Words weren’t minced — Ryan’s wrongdoing was wretched:

“In its initial publication,” the release relayed, “the story misstated that Madhulika Nallani was elected as new speaker for the SGA when in fact Meghana Kotraiah was elected as the SGA’s new speaker.”

According to the publication, it had caused great and grave harm.

It had, however, hurt all except the whites.

We are sorry for the harm this mistake caused to people of colour. We apologize for this offensive, unacceptable error and the hurt we’ve inflicted.

“The expectation,” the post continued, “is to get our reporting right the first time — this story failed to do so.”

This error, in addition to being extremely harmful, erased people who had perimetriums.

The article did not conform to basic journalistic standards, and it invalidated two South Asian women’s achievements.

In times past, a prevailing thought may have been that if you’re deeply wounded by someone you don’t know blowing the name of someone you don’t know, then something is wrong with you.

Our improved perspective: There’s something wrong with the writer, and that something is racism.

This seems to be at least the implication.

I’m not sure what else could be derived from the following:

To prevent such errors, we plan to use implicit bias training.

Don’t be alarmed by Ryan’s inept diss.

Reporter involved has been fired by The Diamondback. Ryan White is no longer associated with The Diamondback.

At least there’s one less White at the paper.

If such circumstances correctly point to prejudice, we’ve seen similar incidents of racism before:

The President of The United States mistakenly mistook Satchel Page from baseball for Thegrate Neegroatthetime.

All editors returned to the University of Maryland. They merely “must…do better.”

They were only guilty of one crime:

Our editors must also do better. The story was edited by five editors before publication. We decided to trust the reporter rather than independently confirm the names and positions of these two women — a mistake that was preventable.

It’s pulverized the paper:

We…recognize how this has caused many of our own staff to reconsider their place within our newspaper.

To all other non-Caucasians, more mea culpa

They can accept our apologies for continuing to set a precedent that has hurt and alienated many students of color over the years. Thank you for all the hard work and time that was put into this project. We will do our best to continue doing so in the future.

Despite only firing Ryan, the Diamondback Powers That Be promise to “continue to hold [them]selves accountable.”

“We need to do better,” the outlet admits.

We hope so.

What if Ryan made an error?

Intention seems to be irrelevant these days.

Pittsburgh’s Point Park University, for instance, has threatened discipline for misgendering and pronoun pratfalls.

“[W]e must recognize that regardless of the intent…action could be taken if a complaint is filed,” its guidelines explain.

So in our enlightened era, be on your P’s and Q’s — or those two letters may stand for “Pink-Slipped Quickly.”

Moving onwards and upwards

-ALEX

****FOR THE FACT CHECKERS**** The above reference to Joe Biden’s speech is inaccurate. He, in fact, called Satchel Paige “the great negro at the time.”

 

You can find more of my content here:

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All my RedState works Here.

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