I made a mistake in a blog posting earlier this week that has gotten way out of control.
In the article I wrote Monday about the death of District Judge Silvia Cano-Garcia, I mistakenly reported that she had been appointed to the position in 2003 by former Gov. Gary Johnson.
The truth is that she was elected to the district judge position, narrowly beating Doug Driggers for the seat in November 2002. She had been appointed by Johnson in 2001 to a magistrate judge position.
The mistake was amplified when the Las Cruces Sun-News repeated it. So did some area television news reporters and Jack Nixon on his radio broadcasts.
The kicker, and the reason I’m writing this instead of simply correcting the error in Monday’s article, is that the governor’s office took the erroneous text from my blog posting, almost word-for-word, and put it into the proclamation Gov. Bill Richardson signed Wednesday ordering flags to fly at half-staff today and tomorrow for Cano-Garcia.
I share all this because it’s important to correct mistakes, and this was a big one. As a journalist, I can’t expect honesty from others if I don’t hold myself to the same standard.
That’ll teach me to do better research. It will hopefully teach the other media organizations and the governor’s office to do their own research.