alt Hacker NewsI see a lot of negative comments on this retraction about how they could have done it better. Things can always be done better but I think the important thing is that they did it at all. Too many 'news' outlets today just ignore their egregious errors, misrepresentations and outright lies and get away with it. I find it refreshing to see not just a correction, but a full retraction of this article. We need to encourage actual journalistic integrity when we see it, even if it is imperfect. This retraction gives me more faith in future articles from them since I know there is at least some editorial review, even if it isn't perfect.
Respectfully, I find this to be an unwarranted positive reaction to have toward this situation. What other action could Ars possibly take as a journalistic business? The quotes are indisputably false. This is hardly a praise-worthy action to take. It's the expected and required action.
With regard to editorial review, an editor didn't catch the error. The target of the false quotes had to register on Ars and post a comment about it. To top it off, more than one Ars commenter was openly suspicious that he was a fake account. Only when some of the readers checked for themselves to see that the quotes were indeed falsified did it gain attention from Ars staff.