‘Mistakes’ part of life, but cover-ups get our attention

It’s not only people who make mistakes, it’s institutions, too.
Institutions such as universities, churches, the military, sports, the police, corporations, nonprofits, agencies, even entire administrations and yes, the press.
Everyone and every institution makes mistakes. They’re a part of life. Whether small or large, public or private.
The most important thing is to own up to them ASAP and make every effort to ensure they don’t happen again.
But covering up mistakes or ignoring them is never the right thing to do. Because then you’re doing everything from putting people in harm’s way to allowing an injustice to thrive for your own ego, your brand or your profit margin.
And that makes a lot of people mad, including journalists, for good reason.
A recent Associated Press story cited a number of instances of sexual abuse at the hands of university physicians and coaches. In each case, complaints by peers and students were ignored or covered up for years, allowing increasingly more such crimes to happen.
That article also noted if not for newspapers — local journalism — those crimes might still be happening.
There are any number of examples of a newspaper’s spotlight exposing such cover-ups, which sometimes are worse than the crime.
Yet, in other instances the “crime” may cost the lives of thousands of our best and brightest for a mistake. Vietnam is still Exhibit A. In that war, top officials not only lied to start it but extended the slaughter for years after privately concluding it was unwinnable.
That recent article though cited hundreds of cases of sexual abuse at several of the nation’s top universities, that only became public after newspapers reported these allegations.
Officials at them only then publicly acknowledged the complaints, which would eventually lead to prison sentences for some offenders and hordes of lawsuits against schools.
As long as newspapers exist, trying to hide “mistakes” — crimes — like these is never the right thing to do.
We are still amazed at the number of cover-ups of everything from financial crimes to discrimination that occur daily in institutions ranging from a Wells Fargo to a small town’s hiring practices..
Those “mistakes” will almost always be discovered and efforts to conceal them only end up making matters worse.
Most journalists never rejoice at having to report someone’s arrest or crime, nor do we cringe at doing so. It’s simply part of the job. Yet, when institutions try to cover up crimes of their employees or of their own, that’s different.
No, we don’t see red at cover-ups, but as a leader at a nonprofit journalism school in Florida recently said:
“You cannot possibly overestimate the importance of public scrutiny on an institution, whether it’s public or private.”