I don't know how you could possibly have that take away from reading this. They did a review of their context to confirm this was an isolated incident and reaffirmed that it did not follow the journalistic standards they have set for themselves.
They admit wrong doing here and point to multiple policy violations.
> That rule is not optional, and it was not followed here.
It’s not optional, but wasn’t followed, with zero repercussions.
Sounds optional.
It's embarrassing for them to put out such a boilerplate "apology" but even more embarrassing to take it at its word.
It's such a cliche that they should have apologized in a human enough way that it didn't sound like the apology was AI generated as well. It's one way they could have earned back a small bit of credibility.
> They did a review of their context to confirm this was an isolated incident
The only incident we know was isolated was getting caught.