The well known newspaper has apologised for the language used in an article about the Berkeley tragedy, accepting that some of it “could be interpreted as insensitive” to the victims’ families.
The article had referred to the J1 visa scheme as an “embarrassment to Ireland”. The six students who died in the tragedy were in the US under this visa.
There had been a strong backlash against the New York Times on foot of such article, and the paper’s vice president of corporate communications Eileen M. Murphy has said that the article in question “was a second day story” whose goal was to put the collapse into context, 24 hours after the incident took place.
Locally here in Ireland, such article had been referred to as a “disgrace”, and Labour Minister of State Aodhan O Riordain had called for the text to be removed.
At the time of this writing however, the article remains on the New York Times website.