Self-criticism is hard to do

OK, you're a newspaper editor and you get a report saying many of the stories you have been running about beach pollution wrongly blame the paper's favorite target, sewage dumping from MMSD, when the likely cause is a number of other factors.

You decide to do a story about it, even though your own paper is being criticized. Good for one point.

Who do you assign it to? The same reporters who wrote the articles that are being criticized in the report. Minus one point.

What do they do? They report the criticism, but also show some initiative and go out and dig up a few sources who disagree with the conclusion. Another minus.

There are rare occasions, and this is one, when you actually wish for a newspaper obmudsman.

Here's the report. And here is the story.