The Jakarta Post made a serious error of judgment on Thursday night when it decided to run on the front page headline story for the Friday edition with the title “Firing squads kill convicts”.

The lead paragraph suggests that 14 people have been executed, and the caption to the photo also says that Zulfikar Ali , the brother of the woman in the photo, was among the 14.

We learned later that four were actually executed and the other 10, including Zulfikar Ali, have been spared, but the paper had already gone into circulation and delivered to readers as has the electronic-version of the paper.

The failure to do the verification before running the story is completely unprofessional and a serious violation of the main principles of good journalism.

The Jakarta Post sincerely apologizes to all our readers, particularly to all those affected by the story, for this major failure.

The Editor

Endy M. Bayuni

Editor-in-chief