One day after the Daily Beast's Howard Kurtz published an erroneous blog post about NBA star Jason Collins, the news site announced it retracted the story.
On Wednesday, Kurtz published a post accusing Collins, the first openly gay male athlete in a major professional sport, of leaving out "one detail." That detail, according to Kurtz, was that Collins "was engaged. To be married. To a woman." Only problem? Collins fully included that detail.
Reporters immediately pounced on Kurtz's post, highlighting that Collins not only included that statement in his original op-ed, but also discussed it in his first television interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos.
On Thursday, The Daily Beast tweeted a link to its retraction. Kurtz's story has been updated to include the fact that Collins included information about his engagement in his op-ed and interview, but "downplayed" that fact and "didn't dwell on it." Read the full retraction below.
The Daily Beast has retracted a May 2, 2013, blog post by Howard Kurtz titled, "Jason Collins’ Other Secret." The piece contained several errors, resulting in a misleading characterization of NBA player Collins and the story he co-wrote in Sports Illustrated in which he came out as gay.
In that piece, Collins wrote, "When I was younger I dated women. I even got engaged. I thought I had to live a certain way. I thought I needed to marry a woman and raise kids with her. I kept telling myself the sky was red, but I always knew it was blue."
In his original blog post, Kurtz incorrectly stated that Collins "didn’t come clean" about the engagement. In an amended version, Kurtz added that Collins "downplayed" the engagement and "didn’t dwell on it."
The Daily Beast sincerely regrets Kurtz’s error—and any implication that Collins attempted to hide or obscure the engagement.