Facts matter and the Daily Journal has a responsibility to investigate and report accurate facts

Facts matter and the Daily Journal has a responsibility to investigate and report accurate facts.

In its recent piece on the retirement of Judge Cormac J. Carney, it stated: "In 2020, Carney was briefly chief judge of the Central District before voluntarily stepp[ing] down after using the term 'street smart' to describe a Black clerk of court during a webinar. He apologized amid criticism that the comment was racially insensitive."

That is simply not true. First, Kiry K. Gray, to whom the article presumably referred, was not simply "a Black clerk of court." She was a dedicated public servant with over three decades of service to the Court who rose to be the historic first African American Clerk of Court in the Central District of California. Second, the statement that led to the premature end of Judge Carney's tenure as Chief was his comment to Ms. Gray in an apparent attempt to address the "street smart" comment in which he said "At least I did not put my foot on your neck like the police officers" in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd's murder.

Had the Daily Journal chosen to speak with Ms. Gray or anyone with knowledge of the facts, they would have reported the events as they actually happened, rather than as some have misled people to believe.