While attending the sentencing hearing for convicted arsonist Larry Farner in Carroll Circuit Court on Jan. 30, the Comet learned in open court from the judge that the reporter covering the arson criminal case made a mistake in reporting.

Judge Donald Currie pointed out that the local media said Farner was represented by a court-appointed attorney, Patrick Manahan. He said that was inaccurate and reported as such.

The judge was correct. We got that wrong; we made a mistake.

We do not intend to make mistakes and when we do, we run a correction immediately. The correction is out there for everyone to see in print. Everyone knows there was an error.

That's why this was so surprising. The error in reporting occurred on page 5A in the Dec. 17 issue of the Comet, over six weeks earlier. We never heard from anyone about this mistake. We never heard from Judge Currie. We never heard from Mr. Farner's privately paid attorney, Mr. Manahan. We never heard from Mrs. Farner. We just never heard from anyone.

When errors occur in the Comet that warrant correction, we want to know about them in a timely manner so we can set the record straight with our readers. Six weeks is not timely.