108 Comments
User's avatar
Frank Paynter's avatar

Way to go Chris! - own up to mistakes as quickly as possible and then move on. That's what REAL journalists do.

Ziani's avatar

Your integrity is refreshing and much appreciated.

Ryan Gardner's avatar

This is what a real man does.

Bravo, Chris.

You're now 99 out of 100. It was bound to happen.

Ziani's avatar

Real man! Bless you. Standards matter.

Rather Curmudgeonly's avatar

If only they taught this kind of integrity in journalism school.

Keith Jajko's avatar

They did when I was in J school. In the late '80s. 😆

ZuZu’s Petals's avatar

Chris, many thanks for this. If only other “journalists” were so quick to retract inaccurate stories.

Skenny's avatar

Honesty as a trait is much preferable to "perfection" or "never being wrong."

Johnstone75's avatar

Holy cow! You made a mistake and admitted it???? Chris. You are not, I repeat NOT, a real journalist.

Brian DeLeon's avatar

Eh. You were close enough. More impressive is you actually drove from the San Gabriel Valley to Santa Monica to report on the ground. That must’ve been a fun drive.

Chris Bray's avatar

Pretty drive, and I got to see the ocean.

nymusicdaily's avatar

hope i'm wrong about this, but if i was you Chris i'd save the original article and repub it when the time comes. the way it looks, it probably will

Bjorn LaSanche's avatar

Well you did say in the previous post that the quality of news stories regarding the governor race was done by a hack.

You can only rely on the sources you have. When sources are garbage it does affect your reports, but your personal integrity makes up for it and doesn’t discredit your work by any means.

Ziani's avatar

Exactly! It does not discredit at all.

Orwell’s Rabbit's avatar

Everyone makes mistakes…not everyone owns up to them. It takes a big man to flat-out admit error and not try to put the blame on others.

Local news is no better than MSM, usually…at least, that’s how it is in my deep blue small city.

Glenn Bogart's avatar

I'm not so sure you were wrong the first time. I read the linked article that was your source, and it seems just as believable as what the authorities are telling you now. The original article cited authorities, too . . .

Chris Bray's avatar

The answer the police gave is plausible, and they identified a public death that wasn't in the local news story, so I'm inclined to trust them. Public health didn't help much. Coroner's answer still pending.

Glenn Bogart's avatar

Have you spoken to the original Observer reporter about this? What does he think?

Chris Bray's avatar

I'll try to, at least.

Glenn Bogart's avatar

Not to bust your b**ls, but this LT. Gilmour may just be repeating to you what the four-stars-on-his-collar police chief is telling him. (Fer Pete's sakes, why do these small cities make their police chiefs four-star generals? Sorry, I digress..) Gilmour is, after all, the Santa Monica PD's media liason, and he's not in a position to tell you anything of his own independent knowledge. His job is to tell you what he has been told to say.

Glenn Bogart's avatar

My own grandson was, until recently, a spokesman for the police department of a city twice as large as Santa Monica. He would tell you, he always said what the police chief and the mayor told him to say about matters of policy importance. He did not do independent investigations. I'm gonna guess, Lt. Gilmour doesn't, either. I'm not saying you've been had. I'm saying it's possible.

Glenn Bogart's avatar

And I think we all know by now, the authorities are fine with lying if it suits the agenda. Lord knows we have seen plenty of that.

Richard Parker's avatar

There are more 4 star police chiefs than than there were 4 star generals to win World War Eleven

FuriousIT's avatar

So now we have a healthlessness problem too?

LauraJ's avatar

Thank you, Chris.

I wish you were teaching professional ethics at a university.

The world needs a whole lot more of this.

the long warred's avatar

Integrity. Thank you.

Frontera Lupita's avatar

Wouldn’t it be “it’s a miracle, a true blue spectacle, a miracle come true”* if MSM and all the others who spread the Pandemic lies, would admit what a Scam and a Major PsyOp CovidCon was, that there was never a deadly virus, it didn’t “spread” from animal to human contact, and that the COVID vaxxes have injured and killed millions of people, far more than the fake COVID virus.

*Barry Manilow

Gunther Heinz's avatar

Barry Manilow used to play piano for Bette Midler until she tried to rape him.

Bill Bradford's avatar

Did she try to "rape the gay away"?.....

Gunther Heinz's avatar

No. She wanted him to pee standing up.

Elizabeth Neville's avatar

The mark of a thorough and honest journalist. Makes me trust your reporting even more. Bravo.