Atlanta Newspaper Issues Correction on Explosive UGA-Sex Abuse Story

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution issued sweeping corrections on Wednesday to a story examining the University of Georgia’s football program’s handling of sexual abuse claims, the newspaper said in a statement. It also fired the reporter who wrote the initial story. The corrections came weeks after the university demanded a retraction of the newspaper’s June 27 story, which claimed the program stood behind two players accused of sexual abuse and suggested the program retained other players with sexual misconduct allegations. The paper did not find that its reporter made up any of the reporting, it said. “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 the 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.”