Editorial: Our apologies for an error

Dear readers,

On Monday, March 11, 2019, tbnewswatch.com published an obituary that we later learned was a fake.

We immediately removed the fraudulent obituary when it was brought to our attention, but that doesn’t erase the fact we’ve made a serious error. I would like to take this time to personally apologize to everyone negatively affected by this incident, including the subject of the obituary, their friends and family.

Allowing the community to provide us with news and information is an important part of tbnewswatch.com. We have worked hard to have a site that is accessible and relevant to the community.

This isn’t the first time someone has used our community features in an attempt to cause mischief. In the past we’ve been able to catch fraudulent posts before publication. Unfortunately we were unable to do that this time. As a community news source we know our credibility is not measured by what we get right, but rather by what we’ve gotten wrong.

Because of this incident we will be reviewing and adjusting our policies and workflow to ensure something like this never happens again. We hope we can begin to restore any trust that may have been lost as a result of this.

Sincerely,

Nicole Dixon, tbnewswatch.com