Dear Gunnar Espen Rotte:

After the backlash of the past weeks, our editors have had to look deep into their hearts, and in a number of areas, they’ve found themselves wanting.

Two weeks ago, we published a photo of you holding two pies that you bought at a bakery outside The Park. The article we published was about your claim that you’d been assaulted during the course of purchasing the pies. Alongside the article, we ran a photo of you holding the pies.

As you and your supporters have pointed out to us for the past ten days, we made a grievous error when we chose the photo. Although it was never our intention to do so, when we used that photograph, we made you look like a happy pie thief rather than as a customer who had suffered maltreatment.

We were wrong. Now, we would like to make it right.

Please accept our sincere apology. We should have given more time and thought to our choice of image. It was a hasty decision made by editors who work on a strict deadline, but that is neither a reason nor an excuse.

The Mammalian Daily takes its rôle seriously. Our duty is to present — and to represent — the story accurately. On this occasion, however, we failed to do the latter and that failure caused harm to you. We are very sorry.

In the next few weeks, we will be holding a series of meetings with our reporting and editorial staff to discuss the ways in which we can avoid repeating this mistake. We would like to take this opportunity to invite you to join us and to help us understand better the position of those whose stories we tell in our newspaper.

But, for now, we hope you will accept our sincere apology.

Sincerely,
Orphea Haas
Managing Editor
The Mammalian Daily