As posted earlier today, M. Reza Salami gives his side of the story. Yes, I took my shot last week, but when I was reminded that not all the facts were in, I backed off. And, of course, I duly posted his op-ed. I can sleep tonight.
Now that Salami has explained himself, there are some told you so’s out there. Hoggard says apologies are in order from “all of the self-righteous, Nifongeske, holier-than-thou, ’true-Americans‘ who slammed him publicly in the weeks after Salami was reported to have taken constitutional issue with being passively proselytized to by a Guilford County public servant with a gun.”
Easy Hogg, the Nifong deal was a little different. Fair enough on the apologies, though, and if a self-righteous letter writer wants to publicly apologize to Prof. Salami, I’m sure the N&R will publish it.
But let’s not forget that the N&R helped fueled this controversy by publishing letters taking issue with Salami’s ‘open container’ — including one today facing Salami’s editorial in which the poor letter writer was asking if “Islamic law forbid the consumption of alcohol” while Salami was right there saying he’s a practicing Christian.
My guess is the N&R was trying to run bith sides of the story, and most of the letters against Salami believed he was doing something wrong. But it still doesn’t seem quite right to me. I’m also haven’t seen a correction regarding this LTE giving factually incorrect information on the Haw River State Park-Bluegreen deal that distorted the immediate issue at hand. So what’s the N&R’s responsibility for running readers’ opinions based on facts that aren’t known yet? Are they not supposed to exercise editorial judgment over LTEs if they’re based on speculation or bad information, especially regarding stories they’ve reported?
