Dishonour Roll: Golfweek Magazine

I had another group lined up for this week's Dishonour Roll, but I've had to put them on the shelf for now. I got home and heard about and saw the image to the left and had to change course.

If you've been here at all this week, you know we've been discussing race a great deal and the words of Kelly Tilghman, pictured right, an anchor on The Golf Channel. Golfweek Magazine has stoked the fire even more with this horrific choice of covers.

Someone at Golfweek Magazine should get fired over this. There is no question that the motive here was to sell magazines based of the controversy and that end result was put ahead of everything else. How someone - anyone - involved in green-lighting this cover didn't wonder aloud whether they were doing something horribly offensive is beyond me.

While you may say that sounds hypocritical coming from the guy who said he didn't understand the grave uproar over the Kelly Tilghman comments, I counter with this:

I give Tilghman the benefit of the doubt that she made a grievous mistake on live television and meant no harm with her comments. Some times, decent people make horrible mistakes and I think that is what happened in her case. She apologized immediately, was punished and we move on. Doesn't mean what she said was okay...

This is a whole different situation though, as this isn't off the cuff and unrehearsed on live TV. Someone started thinking about this the minute the comment became news and ran with it. This is an image that summons the fiercest anger in almost an entire community and there is no way that it should be allowed to sit on shelves around the world.

As a journalist, I am all for freedom of speech, but there are limits. To me, this image and this cover cross that line.