By Anne Harpham

On Monday, the buzz in Honolulu centered on a Washington Times report that intelligence experts had received information in recent weeks that terrorists had targeted nuclear submarines in Pearl Harbor.

Readers who had seen the report on television news the day before or on the Internet, or heard it on the radio, wondered why there was nothing about it in Monday morning's Advertiser.

We were not, as some suggested, trying to cover up this news, or as one reader suggested, ignoring the report because we didn't want to scare away "the almighty tourist dollar." Editors on Sunday night made the decision not to run the story because it couldn't be substantiated.

The report is an excellent example of the challenge facing editors trying to balance the instinct to give readers as much information as we know with the need to make sure the facts are solid.

Here's what happened:

Around 7 p.m. on March 2, The Advertiser's news desk heard that the Washington Times was reporting that intelligence officials believed terrorists were considering a plot to hijack airplanes and crash them into nuclear submarines berthed at Pearl Harbor. The Washington Times report cited an unnamed source for its story.

No story about the Times report had moved on our primary news service, the Associated Press, and when an editor called the local AP bureau, he was told they had no plans to write a story on it.

Advertiser reporters called military officials on O'ahu as well as a spokesman for the governor Sunday night to try to get a reading on whether there was anything to it. Our reporters either got a "no comment" or officials said they didn't know anything about it.

Based on that, executive editor Jim Kelly decided not to publish a story on the report.

"Without confirmation, or even some acknowledgement from local officials that they knew about the report, I thought we would be passing on some questionable information that would scare some people and certainly raise a lot more questions than we could answer," Kelly said.

And indeed, some people were frightened by the report, which later was called totally false by Gov. Linda Lingle, military officials in Honolulu and Washington, and members of the Hawai'i congressional delegation.

Was the decision not to run the story the right call? We certainly didn't brush off the report, and tried under the pressure of deadline Sunday night to chase down some facts. Without anything more than an anonymous source quoted in a small Washington paper, editors believed they had reasons to be cautious.

But as we all know, hindsight often changes one's perspective. And Kelly acknowledges that was the case in this instance.

"Given the intense local media attention to this report the next day, we probably should have written up something brief, attributed the information to the Times, and said officials wouldn't comment or had no information," Kelly said. "As it was, readers were expecting to see something in The Advertiser, and our lack of a story was troubling to them."

We were able to gather enough information to write a story for our Monday-afternoon edition, which quoted military and state officials saying the threat described in the Times was not credible.

"The easiest thing in the world is to pass along every rumor or sketchy report out there, shrug our shoulders and leave it to readers to try to figure out whether this is something they should be worried about," Kelly said. "But that seems to be surrendering our responsibility to ensure that everything we put in the paper has some basis in fact, especially about something as serious as a possible terrorist attack."

How many runners finished the Great Aloha Run?

According to officials, the run had 18,471 registered participants and 16,776 runners and walkers crossed the finish line on Feb. 17.

In originally reporting on the number who finished the Great Aloha Run, we used a number supplied to us by race officials: 11,785. We were then told that number was inaccurate, and that we weren't including members of the military who ran in formation and crossed the finish line but were not "official finishers."

In an effort to determine what number we should use, our Sports Department called race organizers, who referred us to the Great Aloha Run Web site. At the time, the site listed the 11,785 number and did not list the military finishers. We ran an update in the Sports section, reporting the number listed on the site and counting the military finishers separately at 4,028. That's a number we had to make another phone call to get.

This week, we received a letter from run officials saying the military and race sponsors were concerned about our inaccurate reporting, and that we were failing to take into account the participation of the military community.

We were not trying to discredit their participation, as race officials charged.

Quite the contrary. We salute all who participated and all who finished, whether official or not.

Richard Soo

Tom Macdonald

Sue Tetmeyer

The most recent group to complete their "duty" with The Advertiser included:

• Richard Soo, familiar to many as a spokesman for the Honolulu Fire Department, who recently took on new duties as a safety officer for the state Department of Education.

• Tom Macdonald, whose careers range from English professor and Army infantry office in Vietnam to president of the Hawaiian Trust Co.

• David Duffy (not pictured), a University of Hawai'i professor and ecologist who runs the Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit at UH, a think tank that focuses on natural and cultural resources throughout Asia and the Pacific.

• Sue Tetmeyer, a human resources professional who consults with both for-profit and nonprofit entities.

Senior editor Anne Harpham is The Advertiser's reader representative. Reach her at 525-8033 or aharpham@honoluluadvertiser.com.