Journalists Could (Still) Learn from Professor Gaines
June 02, 2005
Professor William Gaines and his students at the University of Illinois were certain they solved the Deep Throat mystery. They were wrong. Yet instead of hemming and hawing or blaming others, the good professor has taken responsibility for his mistake, and even suggested that he has something to learn from his mistake. In a press release, he wrote:
The identity of Deep Throat has been revealed by Bob Woodward as Mark Felt, the first assistant to the director of the FBI. I and the students in my class at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign were in error to have concluded otherwise. It was a learning experience for all of us.
The next step in our education is to study how we went wrong.
What a wonderful, gracious person. I wish journalists would emulate him.