A round of applause to Chris Coursey for his self-critique published today in the Press Democrat.
After going through several front-page stories that acknowledged “human error” (Winnie-the-Pooh fake being one) or otherwise contained mistakes in judgement, he chastised himself for not seeing the forest for the trees in the Willits bypass story—i.e., calling the Mendocino County tree-sitting demonstrator’s tactics “futile and dangerous” and having faith that “cooler heads” (i.e. CHP and Caltrans) would work something out.
Of course, that was before bulldozers and SWAT teams were unleashed.
Whoever made that call was obviously a lot more of a hothead than anyone predicted, and I’m not sure Coursey needs to concern himself with too much hand-wringing in this case. (Not like the torrent of apologies a few weeks ago by journalists who supported the Iraq War.) But we have to say, it’s always nice to see some self-editing and ownership when errors have been made.
