The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has fired reporter Alan Judd after his reporting on allegations of sexual abuse aimed at the University of Georgia football program proved to be problematic.
After the June 27 story, the university sent a lengthy letter of complaint to the paper demanding a retraction of the story over what the school claimed were false allegations.
The paper said it would not retract the story, but it has agreed that the original article did not meet the paper’s “journalistic standards.”
The AJC did make several corrections to the article. The paper added a note to the story reading, “The headline, subheadline and portions of the text of this article were changed on July 19, 2023, after the AJC determined that certain statements contained in the article when it was originally published did not meet the AJC’s editorial standards.”
Head coach Kirby Smart of the Georgia Bulldogs against the LSU Tigers at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on December 03, 2022, in Atlanta, Georgia. (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
The paper also published a follow-up making several changes to its previous reporting, including retracting the claim that 11 players stayed with the team after the abuse allegations were made. The paper now says it could not substantiate a “precise count of 11 players.”
A second correction was made after the paper found that its writer had combined two quotes into one when the actual quotes were made several minutes apart. But the quotes still didn’t change meaning, the paper said.
“Connecting the sentences did not change the meaning of the quote, but the way it was presented to readers failed to meet AJC standards,” the AJC added.
Still, the paper insists that, despite firing the reporter, “The AJC review found no instances of fabrications in the story, as the university’s letter had alleged.”
Georgia Bulldogs linebacker Robert Beal Jr. (33), Georgia Bulldogs defensive lineman Jalen Carter (88), Georgia Bulldogs defensive back Christopher Smith (29), and Georgia Bulldogs defensive back Kelee Ringo (5) exit the game at the beginning of the fourth quarter during the Georgia Bulldogs game versus the TCU Horned Frogs in the College Football Playoff National Championship game on January 9, 2023, at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, CA. (Chris Williams/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
“Our editorial integrity and the trust our community has in us is at the core of who we are,” Editor-in-Chief Leroy Chapman said in a statement. “After receiving the university’s letter, we assigned our team of editors and lawyers to carefully review each claim in the nine-page document we received, along with some additional source material that supported the original story. We identified errors that fell short of our standards, and we corrected them.”
Chapman said his paper’s charge is to hold people and institutions accountable, but he added AJC also “must hold ourselves to this same standard and acknowledge when we fall short, which we have here. We apologize to the university and our readers for the errors.”
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