November 14th, 2013
To the Members of the New Westminster Police Department and the general public,
On November 5, the Other Press published an article both online and in print titled “New Westminster Police Under Investigation” which reported on fictitious events surrounding the police department accidentally distributing illegal drugs as Halloween candy to minors.
On the behalf of the Other Press society, we would like to apologize for the article mentioned above.
While the article was never meant to be interpreted as real reporting, it has come to our attention that the piece was seen by several parties as actual happenings in our community and that is unacceptable. Neither the writer nor the newspaper itself had intended for the story to be taken for a real-life event, but our intentions are irrelevant. The article has had a negative effect on the New Westminster Police Department’s image and we hope that this apology may reach those of you affected by this so the misinformation can be corrected. We are also sorry to any members of the community that we may have caused alarm in or misled in any away.
The Other Press takes pride in being a community-based publication and it pains us to hear that something we were responsible for has had negative repercussions throughout New Westminster. Our mission is to inform and entertain, but never to mislead. We recognize our mistake and will be more diligent than ever to ensure that future articles, both humour-based and otherwise, are fair representations of the quality we would like to uphold at the newspaper.
We hope that this letter can be seen as an example of our sincere apologies for any harm the piece may have caused to the New Westminster Police Department’s image, to the staff themselves, or to the public at large. We have deleted the article from our website, as well as removed the online version of the issue that was uploaded to issuu.com. We will also be publishing a formal apology in the upcoming print issue out on November 19.
If you have any future comments or concerns, you can reach Jacey Gibb, Editor-in-chief, at editor.otherpress@gmail.ca
Sincerely,
The Other Press
