Letters to the Editor
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unfortunate headline, even more unfortunate correction
The story of this story just goes from bad to worse. I'm familiar with Nathan's work and admire her journalism, still I cringed when I read that blaring headline. Whoever signed off on it is the one who should have been singled out in the correction.
I failed to read the story before it was pulled so I can't speak to how Nathan described, if she did, federal law. But it seems to me that the story shouldn't be pulled entirely just because she got the substantive law wrong. She is a journalist and not a lawyer. If the article was an opinion piece it probably need only be accurate about the writer's perception that she was in legal jeopardy for her research into child porn. Clearly one would hope for legal accuracy as well but then, as her editors, you perhaps would have caught it if her mischaracterization of the law was so obvious.
You guys really botched this one and I regret that Debbie Nathan is being put in this situation by Salon.