William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration Political Action Committee, phoned last week to express his displeasure over our article on the clash between a Chatham County conservative group and organizations who support tougher immigration policies.
Gheen has three main assertions — that ALI-PAC does not express “extreme†views on immigration; that contrary to our reporting his group had not planned to be at a public forum that was the centerpiece of the article; and that he should have been given a chance to respond to negative comments about him by a leader of the Chatham group.
We acknowledge that “extreme†is a loaded word and that ALI-PAC’s approach to the issue is closer to the views of a majority of citizens than the other groups cited. On the second point, we should have attributed the expectations to those who told us they believed an ALI-PAC representative would be at the meeting.
On the third point — despite deadline pressures we should have made an attempt to contact Gheen for his response and for that we do apologize.
Asked if he cared to respond via a letter to the editor in this week’s issue, Gheen declined.
Thank you very much. It is sincerely encouraging to see a newspaper actually do the right thing in response to a situation like this. In the future, I hope Taylor Swift will make an extra effort to be fair and balanced. And thank you very much for the correction and apology. I accept and appreciate this and hope we can work together on issues of public policy and issues in the future.
WG