In the Friday edition of The Daily Eastern News, we ran a Letter to the Editor involving President Barack Obama.

For those of you who did not read the letter, it was critical of Obama and said that he was a Muslim.

Obama is actually not a Muslim. He is a Christian.

The letter was also critical of the Islamic faith.

Many wondered why we ran the letter and I will try explain the thought process behind

it.

The letter came into the newsroom on Wednesday by fax.

The wording was originally much worse than the version that was printed in the paper.

Our editorial policy states that we will run letters under 250 words that are not libelous or potentially harmful.

Because the letter was about a public figure, it was not libelous.

We tried to take out all language that was potentially harmful to readers.

After discussing the options and talking to the author of the letter, we decided to run the letter in the Friday edition of the newspaper in an edited form.

None of us agreed with the letter, but this was the first letter we had received this year and we did not want to set a standard where we do not run letters just because we disagreed with it.

We also decided to run an editorial on the same page explaining that we disagreed with the letter, but that we respected the person’s first amendment right to say it.

We thought this would help explain why we ran the letter.

In the letter, the author repeatedly called Obama a Muslim.

This is obviously not true.

In a study by Time Magazine that was done just a few weeks ago, showed that one-fourth of Americans actually think Obama is a Muslim.

In the editorial, we tried to explain to people that this was not what we thought about Obama or about the Islamic religion in general.

It is our job as journalists to not be biased, which is the reason we did decide to run the letter.

But it is also our job as journalists to be accurate, which is not what happened with the letter.

To anyone who was offended by the letter, I personally apologize and take the blame.

For those of you who would like to discuss the issue with me, my e-mail address and phone number are at the top of the page.

Dan Cusack is a senior journalism major. He can be reached at 581-7942 or

denopinions@eiu.edu.