Mea Culpa

"In short, we find ourselves guilty," the Washington Post told readers of its editorial page. In convicting itself of "reinforcing a misconception," the Post was straightforward about it: "There is no adequate excuse for making this kind of error in the first place and none for failing to pursue the truth behind the phony 'facts.' "

The Post's sin was to state on Dec. 9, 1969 that "a total of 28 [Black] Panther members have died in clashes with police since Jan. 1, 1968" without giving the source of its information or trying to verify the accuracy of the figure. What prompted the Post apology was an investigative report by Edward Jay Epstein, published last month in The New Yorker. In six months of research, Epstein found that only ten Panther deaths were due to police action, and in at least eight of those cases the police had been provoked in varying degrees before opening fire.

Tracking Truth. The original claim of 28 police-connected Panther deaths was made by Charles R. Garry, chief counsel for the Black Panther Party. Most newspapers that reported Garry's statement mentioned the lawyer in their original stories. But some--including the Post and the New York Times--carelessly dropped Garry's name in subsequent stories. With or without mention of the source, the constant use of the figure tended to fix it as factual in the public mind. When finally confronted by Epstein last fall, Garry readily modified the charge from 28 Panther deaths to 19. Later, he classified any figure as "irrelevant."

Epstein, a 35-year-old political-science instructor at Harvard, was assigned to track down the truth of the police-Panther issue by New Yorker Editor William Shawn. He not only deflated the Garry figure but also took the press as a whole to task for failing to carefully check claims that enthusiastic partisans such as Garry make for their cause.

Among Epstein's targets were both TIME and Newsweek. While neither accepted Garry's claim as fact, both used it as a reason for speculating on the possibility of a planned police campaign against the Panthers. TIME (Dec. 19, 1969) asked: "Are the raids against Panther offices part of a national design to destroy the Panther leadership?" In the same week, Newsweek posed a similar question: "Is there some sort of government conspiracy afoot to exterminate the Black Panthers?" LIFE gets some backhanded credit for saying in its Feb. 6, 1970, issue: "The Panthers claim 28 dead, but it is uncertain that more than a dozen have died of police bullets."

Shouldering Blame. The Epstein article stirred some self-examination that served to remind newsmen that they can never be too careful. In taking itself to task, the Post filed only a mild demurrer "concerning Mr. Epstein's presentation of his case and his manner of quoting." The Times dutifully mentioned Epstein's indictment, but in a story that was buried deep in a bulging Sunday edition. The Washington Star, which was not even among those accused by Epstein, ran an editorial that noted its own care not to use Garry's figure without attribution, complimented the Post for its mea culpa, but nonetheless shouldered part of the blame directed at the press in general.

Said the Star: "We should have learned to suspect the casual statistic from the bitter history of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who transformed the numbers game into an impure art. The charge is justified. The plea is guilty. The pledge is to resharpen the instinct for skepticism that is the first requirement of responsible journalism."

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