California Paper Bashes Anti-Tax Hike Voters, Then Scrubs It

On Wednesday, a California newspaper created an editorial harshly criticizing voters for overwhelmingly defeating ballot initiatives that would have raised taxes to pay for exploding budget deficits.

After the Sacramento Bee received numerous complaints in the comments section at its website, the original piece was removed and replaced with one pointing fingers at elected officials.

As Doug Ross reported, this was the Bee's explanation (h/t NBer danebramage):

Note to our readers: Many of the comments below refer to an article that was posted in error. That article was a draft prepared for internal discussion among members of The Bee's editorial board. Such discussions are a routine part of our work, and frequently lead to editorials that are considerably different from writers' first drafts.

That's what happened in this case. After discussion, we decided that our initial editorial about the special election should take a different tack. The result was the editorial that now appears on this page. This editorial is the only editorial about the special election that appeared in Wednesday's editions of The Bee.

David Holwerk, Editorial Page Editor, The Sacramento Bee 

Readers are advised to review both the original editorial and the replacement here.

Exit questions: Do you buy the Bee's explanation, or think it's a cover?

Assuming the latter, editorial boards are supposed to take positions on issues. If board members really supported these initiatives, was it wrong of them to challenge the results?

After all, voters CAN make mistakes too, can't they?