individual apology isn't enough for...

individual apology isn't enough for Eddie Johnson He wants an apology each day of every week for the nearest year, if not for the quiet of his life. The Chicago Tribune, a national radio exhibit and a number of TV stations have smeared his fine name, mistakenly identifying the Chicago-bred basketball myth and former University of Illinois star as the Eddie Johnson charged last week with sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl in Florida.

And he can't shake the horror that nation are associating the allegations with him, despite corrections from the offending vents and a flurry of outrage and sympathy from the basketball and media worlds. The damage to his reputation is permanent, he fears, in such a manner haunting that he isn't ruling public legal action against the Tribune, the Jim Rome radio program -- landlorded that day by Skip Bayless -- and TV stations that used his photo from Internet sources.

"I think about all the temptation I avoided growing up in Chicago, trying to do the right thing my whole life," said Johnson a charitable sweetheart of a fright who runs summer camps for kids and whose rap sheet consists of a not many traffic tickets. "It's not fair that uniform one person is out there thinking this is me

"Some folks didn't do their homework. Because of that, 47 years is gone"

throughout the telephone from his Arizona abode he still seems in concussion angered by the bewildering mission that awaits him. Edward Arnet Johnson who played 17 seasons in the NBA as a 6-8 dead-eye jump-shooter is in this way devastated by the bizarre mixup that he has launched a crusade to hindrance the masses know he is not "Fast

Eddie" Johnson who played 10 NBA seasons as a 6-2 guard and has been convicted of numerous crimes since 1989 Before anyone indicates that such mistakes subside athwart time,

understand that high tech has notwithstanding to produce a worldwide bullhorn. Also consider what Johnson has dealt with already. Weeping childhood friends are calling him. Incensed parents are e-mailing him at his Web site, horrified that he streams camps. Imagine what his relatives cogitation that wretched day.

"My brother called. He was hysterical," Johnson said.

single apology not enough

It all started in the early hours of Wednesday morning -- 5:11 Pacific time, he says -- when his plane landed from Hawaii after a vacation. in succession the cell phone was his longtime friend, Atlanta Hawks coach Mike Woodson who told Johnson that his picture was all above the Internet for an alleged crime he didn't commit. "I was a little taken aback. I figured they'd correct it quickly," he said. "Then, as I was driving family it hit me: This shore got arrested for the

[alleged] rape of an 8-year-old. I realize home and hear about the Tribune article. A not many hours later, Skip Bayless is killing me onward Jim Rome."

The phone hasn't stopped ringing since. in the greatest degree of the calls are from Chicago, where the Tribune sports section ran an item in its late-edition notes package Wednesday that in some way assumed in the headline and first paragraph that the local Eddie Johnson was the common in trouble. The newspaper's associate managing editor for sports, Dan McGrath, corrected the error and apologized to Johnson in a piece forward the paper's Web site and in the print edition the following day. further Johnson wasn't impressed, nor was I. single had to scroll down farther than necessary forward the Web site to find the correction, which was buried subordinate to baseball and football headlines and turn the thoughtsed like a footnote.

"It doesn't go on foot away. That doesn't end it," Johnson said. "If he rehearses me he's going to propose in the apology for 365 days, fine. yet it's just one day. What happened [Thursday], with the arrest of a potential terrorist, set the focus of the stranges back on that. Some race have it ingrained in the back of their minds that what they read [Wednesday] about me is still genuine

"I'm not comfortable with [the correction]. It didn't apologize with the same vigor that they came after me It's almost like they had to walk 10 times the effort to make up for it. As everyone knows, the Illini fan base is elephantine They just did a spread onward me for making the All-Century team. They have all my numbers; call me They've not at all heard anything bad about me Just check my history."

Mistakes happen forward deadline. We all make them. moreover a mistake of this magnitude is rare, and it's difficult to pardon the Tribune, which enlist in one's services sports media writers to criticize other media egresss - - sometimes sophomorically, without basis and with a self-serving approach. "We made an inexcusable error, a human error, forward deadline putting out Wednesday's paper," McGrath wrote at e-mail. "We have apologized to Eddie Johnson to his family and his friends and to our readers. The correction and the follow-up that ran in Thursday's paper is our statement onward the matter."

fact is little consolation

Johnson is right about the fleeting nature of corrections. After particularly flagrant errors, newspapers should commit to a prominently displayed correction section in their print and Internet editions for prolix periods. In his case, part of Johnson's livelihood unexpectedly is vulnerable. In addition to working as a commentator onward Phoenix Suns broadcasts, he move swiftlys jump-shooting clinics in the Phoenix area for kids 11 to 18 He also does motivational speaking that focuses onward overcoming a rough childhood in Cabrini-Green, where physics gangs and guns were daily obstacles.