AJC issues corrections in story regarding Georgia football program, fires author

The Atlanta Journal Constitution issued corrections Wedneday to its recent investigation into the Georgia football program’s handling of sexual abuse allegations against players and recruits.

This came on the heels after the university demanded retraction of the original story earlier this month. In a statement, the AJC fired author Alan Judd, the writer of the original piece. He violated the organization’s journalistic standards.

However, the AJC declined the letter’s demand for the article to be retracted, according to Editor-in-Chief Leroy Chapman.

Chapman said the AJC said there were no fabrications within the story as the university alleged.

“The article, first published on June 27, detailed how the national championship-winning football program rallied behind two athletes accused of sexual assault and domestic violence in recent years,” the AJC’s Brian Eason wrote. “It also suggested a pattern of the football program retaining other players accused of sexual misconduct on the team roster, but such a pattern could not be substantiated by the AJC’s internal review, according to Chapman.”

The confirmed cases where the athletes were named in the story were “accurate and newsworthy,” according to an editor’s note attached to a revised version of the article.

“Our editorial integrity and the trust our community has in us is at the core of who we are,” Chapman said in a statement. “After receiving the university’s letter, we assigned our team of editors and lawyers to carefully review each claim in the nine-page document we received, along with some additional source material that supported the original story. We identified errors that fell short of our standards, and we corrected them.”

Editors from the AJC said the paper could not substantiate one of the article’s key assertions regarding Kirby Smart’s tenure: that 11 players remained with the team after women reported violent encounters.

As a result, the AJC removed or adjusted several paragraphs in the story that depended on that count and edited the headline. The original headline was: UGA football program rallies when players accused of abusing women.

“A critical part of our mission is to hold people and institutions accountable. It is a responsibility we take seriously,” Chapman said. “We must hold ourselves to this same standard and acknowledge when we fall short, which we have here. We apologize to the university and our readers for the errors.”

Judd, the fired author, worked for the outlet for nearly 25 years before his dismissal amid this incident.