While the United States, of America, still grapples to come to terms with the worst ever school shooting in its history, a newspaper went and did the unthinkable yesterday.

The newspaper, the Stamford Advocate, somehow managed to place an advert for a gun show alongside an article about the students of Sandy Hook Elementary attending school for the first time since the mass shooting yesterday.

Twitter user Bekim Ukperaj first tweeted a photo of the ad before it began to get picked up by various other individuals.

Media watchdog and journalist Jim Romenesko reacted in much the same way as many people did:

Shouldn’t it be standard operating procedure at this point to make sure there aren’t gun ads next to school shooting-related stories?

Basically, a computer didn’t do this, a person had to have had control over the placement of the ad, and Jim put that to Hearst Connecticut Media Group executive editor Barbara Roessner, who gave this response:

Our newspapers should not be running gun ads — including ads for antique and collectible gun shows — next to stories about Sandy Hook. It’s insensitive, and it shouldn’t have happened. It was an oversight, and we apologise for it. We have taken steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

An oversight indeed.

[Source: TheWeek]