The September 11th attack
Mainland newspaper sends apologies to Hawai'i
| • | Read Zacharias' column |
| • | Previous story: Column on unpatriotic spirit draws Islands' ire |
| • | Join our discussion |
By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer
E-mails responding to critical comments in a Washington newspaper about a perceived lack of patriotism in Waikiki overwhelmed the Web site of the Tri-City Herald yesterday and caused it to crash.
More than 1,500 people — most of them from Hawai'i — have been blasting Karen Spears Zacharias for her Sunday column that focused on three soldiers gathered around a flag-waving man in Waikiki who all wondered why more American flags weren't being displayed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Zacharias, who was stranded in Hawai'i because of the ban on commercial flights, quoted one of the men as calling the atmosphere "almost anti-American."
Yesterday Ken Robertson, executive editor of the Tri-City Herald, said: "We wished we'd been more sensitive in how we handled this and we're sorry that we poked people in the eye who were already feeling like many of us are feeling."
The newspaper, based in Kennewick, Wash., does not usually post Zacharias' Sunday column on its Web site. But it did on Tuesday, in response to the outraged reaction of Hawai'i people who heard about her comments, Robertson said.
He is writing his own column Sunday about the furor and plans to post it as well.
Zacharias, whose telephone was busy in the newspaper's Oregon bureau for much of yesterday and could not be reached for comment, may or may not write about the controversy in her Sunday column, Robertson said.
If she does, the newspaper would post it on its Web site, he said.
The torrent of phone calls and e-mails offered a humbling lesson to Robertson and his staff of 45.
In the days after the terrorist attacks, Robertson said, the newspaper was taking great care to be sensitive in writing about the area's Muslim community and was not as focused on Zacharias' column.
"There's a great lesson here," Robertson said. "You can't forget that you have to think just as hard and be just as sensitive to everything else. ... It's prompted everybody on our staff to become a little more extra careful and a little more thoughtful."
Zacharias faces no disciplinary action, despite pleas in e-mail from residents in Hawai'i that she be punished, Robertson said.
"If we fired everybody who ever made a mistake," he said, "every newsroom in the nation would be peopled with folks who never did anything."
