Editorial By John-Henry Westen
This editorial is prompted by a necessary (in our opinion) retraction of the Tuesday story entitled “German Pastor Sentenced to a Year in Jail for Comparing Abortion to the Nazi Holocaust.” The incident provides an opportunity to explain the LifeSiteNews policy on reporting accuracy and response to the inevitable occasional misreporting of some facts.
LifeSiteNews originally produced the now retracted story after reading a report by a trusted European news source that has in the past broken accurate, major stories on the culture wars in Europe. We further confirmed elements of the story from German news sources which we had translated into English.
Following the publication of our report on the issue a few well informed LifeSiteNews.com readers from Europe, Canada and the United States advised us there were serious problems with the accuracy of some items in the original report by the European news source. We are always grateful for such clarifying information from readers.
As soon as we learned about and confirmed the errors of fact and their gravity we acted for the benefit of our readers. First, we removed the online version at LifeSiteNews.com and posted a correction notice. This was followed by an immediate email correction notice to all LifeSiteNews.com’s subscribers. Further, we emailed the German governmental authorities in question to let them know of our error and our retraction and apologized to them.
The story of Pastor Lerle is a complicated one, because, according to news reports, he has in fact been jailed in the past specifically for activities and statements opposing abortion. He has also compared abortion to the holocaust. However, he has also questioned the nature and scope of the Holocaust which is a crime in Germany. It is on those charges that his current one-year jail sentence was based.
From various writings on his website Pastor Lerle has questioned the numbers of Jews killed in the Nazi holocaust, if gas chambers were used on German soil, if skin was made into lampshades and human bones used for soap etc.
Had LifeSiteNews.com been aware of the latter we would not have published a story on his recent conviction.
Reactions to our retraction/correction have varied. A majority of emails expressed appreciation for the fact that we issued a correction.
One reader stated, “I’m happy to see that your site has this sort of integrity”. The correction prompted a $50 donation which came with this note: “My donation is prompted by your errata re: the man who was arrested for Holocaust denial. Everyone makes mistakes. People with integrity admit them and correct them. Be encouraged!” Another wrote, “Unlike liberals, you admit upfront when you make a mistake” and another stated, “I do appreciate you timely informing readers as well as the German authorities. I respect you and your publication. Thank you for your tremendous service.”
Those types of responses contrasted with others such as: “How can we ever beleive anything you ever say again? STUPID does not begin to describe you.” And, “I can no longer trust this site to provide accurate and verified information.”
LifeSiteNews has published some 17,000 news stories since 1997 (all are available in our archives) and in those ten years the number with some seriously inaccurate information has been extremely small. Most published corrections over the years have involved comparatively minor issues.
Most importantly, unlike many other media, we do post an immediate correction notice on those rare occasions when we have verified that one is needed. You may recall the huge errors in a recent New York Times article that we exposed and which, in the end, despite indisputable evidence, the Times never actually fully corrected or apologize for.
We have broken numerous major stories over the years for which our readers have been most grateful. Many of those reports have initiated important changes or positive actions related to the stories.
In the end, therefore, you CAN trust LifeSiteNews.com. We have a reputation for trustworthiness which we guard zealously. We gladly take the occasional egg on our face that the up front publishing of corrections entails, as the price for maintaining our integrity.