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BikePortland Publisher Jonathan Maus issued an apology this morning for a blog post in which he alleges an Asian man on an activist ride was an undercover cop, when, it turns out, the man wasn't.
Maus posted a side-by-side photo of the man on the ride and a Portland Police captain and said "the man in these photos appears to be the same man wearing a PPB uniform."
The post ignited a Twitter battle between Maus and his supporters and those—including many Portland-area journalists—who felt the whole thing was racially insensitive.
WW wrote about the dust up including some of Maus' Tweets defending himself yesterday.
Today, Maus issued a formal apology on his popular bike activist site.
"Yesterday, caught up in the storm of the situation, I defended my story and my actions against what I thought were unfair and uninformed criticisms," he writes. "That defense only added to the storm. As an extremely confident person, especially when it comes to BikePortland (if I wasn't, the site would not be what it is today), regular readers know that I often go to great lengths to defend my reporting and my editorial decisions. That's what I did yesterday before I fully realized the consequences of my initial mistake."
He goes on to say that he is open and accepting of criticism. He adds that he was raised to be color-blind in his upbringing in California and didn't even consider race when he was posting the allegations.
"I have to re-train myself to see race and to understand its role in shaping our city and the issues I cover," Maus writes.
WWeek 2015