Gruntled again

Yesterday's little dust-up concerning belly dancers seemed to be well in hand. I felt it was just a minor error by the reporter, who probably misread the copious notes he had collected surrounding the series of articles he has been writing about human trafficking. The manner in which the Daily Nebraskan had responded to it, however, fired me up, and I was like a dog with a bone to chew.

This occurred yesterday when it came to my attention that the DN had corrected the (non) quote in its online edition, and had also run a correction in the print edition.  I happened to see the print edition, and my formerly red hair (red former hair?) began to flame. This was no correction at all.  Rather, it was an apology by the DN for printing my (non) quote!  Instead of simply stating that Casady had been misquoted, the DN actually did the reverse: confirmed that they had quoted me, and apologized for printing what I (had not) said:

"In a quote in a March 6 Daily Nebraskan article, Lincoln public safety officer Tom Casady listed 'belly dancer' among a list of sex related businesses escort services may be fronts for. The Daily Nebraskan did not  intend to associate belly dancing with sexual transactions by running the quote and apologizes for any confusion. Belly dancing is a form of middle eastern dance taught and practiced throughout the world. the Daily Nebraskan regrets this error."

I never asked for a correction in the first place, but this was worse. The editors of the Daily Nebraskan chould have just called me or sent me an email to say, "Sorry we misquoted you, and really sorry our attempt to correct matters actually compounded the error."

It took quite an effort on my part to get this to happen, but I finally received an email reply from the managing editor and a return phone call from the editor-in-chief at the end of the day.  The appropriate apology was politely delivered, and this was published in this morning's print edition:

"A story on human trafficking, which ran in the Daily Nebraskan on march 6, misquoted Lincoln Public Safety Director Tom Casady. In the story, he is quoted including “belly dancers” in a list of sex-related businesses that escort services may be fronts for during his testimony to the state Legislature’s Judiciary Committee. According to the committee hearing transcript, the phrase in the quote should instead be “lap dances.” Belly dancing is a form of Middle Eastern dance taught and practiced around the world. The Daily Nebraskan regrets the error."

That's more like it. Consider me gruntled. Among the flood of emails I received from belly dancers was this one last night, from someone who is mad that I am not sufficiently mad about a student journalist's one word error. The subject line was "Still annoyed...":

"Dear Mr. Casady,

I am going to keep this brief, but in the scheme of things the misquote was a big deal, a very big deal.  If you know anything about the history of Raqs Sharqi/Belly dance in the U.S, then you will understand the reason so many dancers were 'peeved'. The dance was seen as lewd, disgusting, and sexual on its arrival and not much has changed I see; it was call the hootchy coochy dance at one point.  Still today, there are social stigmas that women who want to partake in this art face from their families, friends, and colleagues right here in the USA, not to mention what the dancers endure in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East.  Scholar Andrea Deacon wrote, ' western society takes various distancing positions toward belly dance: ignoring, joking about , diminishing'. And that what you did, diminished the mistake as trivial as if we were all the same or unimportant. So it is still quite offensive that you took the misquote so lightly until it involved you."