W ith the publication of the Washington News Council’s report on The Spokesman-Review’s coverage of River Park Square, many people feel that the issue is now dead and done with and perhaps best forgotten. I disagree.

The truest test of any organization is how it handles its most important challenges and especially how it responds to its failures. And make no mistake, the handling of the River Park Square coverage by the Review was a spectacular failure.

The Review should be commended for commissioning the News Council to do the report, but the most important thing will be how the present staff uses the results of that study. If it’s shelved and forgotten, the valuable lessons this excruciatingly painful experience produced will be wasted and that would be the final shame.

First, all the participants who were involved in any way in that issue have to take their share of the blame — a meltdown of that scope cannot be laid on only one or two shoulders, as attractive as that may seem to many.

Of all the participants, I blame the developers least — they were doing what developers do, trying to get the best deal that they could. We might not approve of their methods; we may think they were self-serving or simply selfish, but you can hardly blame a fish for swimming or a hawk for eating a pigeon — it’s what they do, and we can hardly be surprised when they do it.

I also place less blame than many others do on the publisher. Stacey Cowles was in his early 30s and was rudely thrust into the role of publisher and Cowles fortune captain with the untimely death of his father in 1992. That he was ill-prepared to manage the multiple roles demanded of him at the time almost goes without saying.

It’s easy to fault him for not being wiser and more cognizant of the privilege that goes with heading a major daily newspaper, but I would have hoped that older, more seasoned members of the organization and the clan would have stepped in to provide guidance and counsel at the time, counsel that might have served to temper some of the decisions that were made. If that counsel was given and ignored, then the blame lies with the younger Cowles, but only they know the truth of that.

It’s obvious to virtually everyone I know that attorney Duane Swinton didn’t do himself or the newspaper any favors by attempting to simultaneously serve two masters — the family’s business interests and the newsroom as the paper’s First Amendment counsel. I cannot even begin to comprehend how he could not see the conflict inherent in trying to play all parts.

It’s tempting to place most of the blame with the editor, Chris Peck, and the fact is that he should bear the greatest amount of accountability. He was editor and in that role responsible for seeing the bigger picture, not only for the newspaper, but also for the community and the family.

But, from his comments in the past and on the report Peck has again demonstrated that he never did “get it” and that indeed he still doesn’t. Treating River Park Square as simply another story was a failure of editorial judgment, and his continued defense of his decisions is a sad commentary on the ability we all have to turn a blind eye to our own failures.

Finally, the general staff of the paper has to accept its share of the responsibility. Certainly some reporters and editors did at times raise concerns and voice differences of opinion. But there are times when objecting isn’t enough. Reporters and editors could have and should have said “no.”

It may seem idealistic and even naive to counsel others to put their livelihood on the line for a principle, but there are times when nothing less is required. Who knows, if some of the senior reporters and editors had drawn a hard line at the time and refused to put their names on the stories, had refused to even be associated with the story, things might have changed.

And this for me is the essential point. A newspaper enjoys a wide range of special protections because it claims those protections are needed if it is going to be an effective watchdog for the public. But, if the journalists who are the bearers of those protections don’t or won’t hold themselves to the same standards they demand of others, then they don’t deserve to have them.

It is time to move on from the River Park Square era, but one final note to Editor Steve Smith.

Moving on should mean moving up — it’s time to take the high road all the way: Sniping at the “checkered record of other journalists” is petty and beneath your position.

The ability to take criticism both from within and without is one lesson at least the Review staff should take to heart from its memories of River Park Square.