Retraction and Apology

On Monday, March 18, 2024, the Jag Journal ran an article entitled Teacher Distributes Alcohol to Students. The Jag Journal now retracts the article in its entirety and issues an apology to the adults and students named in it.

After further review, this article didn’t meet the basic standards of journalism we expect for ourselves as a publication. The great freedoms afforded news organizations and journalists come with equally important responsibilities.

Specifically, in the article, we failed: to provide individuals named in the story an opportunity to respond to allegations against them; to attribute assertions in the article to confirmed sources; to corroborate information provided to the Jag Journal in accordance with accepted industry standards and practices and; most importantly, to ensure the allegations made in our story were actually true.

The Jag Journal is a student newspaper; however, we are still expected to adhere to the same principles of journalistic integrity as any other news publication. In this matter, our ethical responsibility is to hold ourselves accountable for the material. We deeply regret any distress the article may have caused and we will use this instance as an important learning opportunity.