The Daily Orange prioritizes accuracy and fairness in our reporting above all else. Earlier Tuesday, columnist Christian Andreoli notified our editorial staff that his most recent column, “Various eating habits find some students skipping meals,” contained fabricated quotes from at least one source. That source is no longer included in the piece. 

We have since terminated Andreoli’s position at The D.O. and have begun an internal investigation to determine whether any of his previous work contains fabricated quotes or paraphrases. We’ll be publishing the results of that investigation as soon as we’ve collected all necessary information. 

The D.O. has a zero-tolerance policy that prohibits the intentional fabrication or misrepresentation of quotes from sources. Our code of ethics mandates that D.O. reporters and columnists commit to accuracy in all reporting pursuits.

We deeply regret this oversight and understand that such an error erodes our readers’ trust in our publication. The D.O. sincerely apologizes to the source to whom the fabricated quotes were attributed. 

As we normally do with all columnists, The D.O.’s Opinion staff will be hosting mandatory workshops to discuss our ethical and editorial expectations for all pieces with columnists. We recognize that not all of our editorial columnists have journalistic backgrounds and may not be familiar with reporting protocols. However, this does not excuse our columnists from disregarding journalistic expectations.

The D.O. deeply values our readers’ trust, and we apologize for the severe violation of our standards. If you have any questions about our ethical or editorial policies, please contact editor@dailyorange.com. 

Casey Darnell | Editor-in-chief 

Emma Folts | Managing Editor 

Nick Robertson | Editorial Editor

Published on September 22, 2020 at 7:26 pm