WASHINGTON – The Washington Chronicle today publicly apologized for its 12 hour delay in publishing the story “Drone Attacks Kill Only Terrorists” yesterday.

Yesterday, the Department of Defense had held a press conference asserting that: “No innocent person has ever died in any country due to a drone attack. And even if they ever did—which they didn’t—their small, meaningless lives are a small price to pay for our continued freedom and way of life. It’s worth it.”

While most news agencies had successfully filed and published their stories within thirty minutes of the Pentagon press conference, The Washington Chronicle was noticeably slow in publishing its story.

Washington Chronicle chief editor, Johnny Mendacio, explained that “a young, attractive, inexperienced reporter spent precious hours trying to verify the Pentagon’s press release with foreign sources, causing an unacceptable delay in the publication of our story.”

“This was an unauthorized deviation from our timely journalistic procedures. We have already promised to never send this reporter back to the Pentagon press pool,” Mendacio said.

The reporter, Cassandra Des Paire, 23, apologized for the delay, explaining: “In journalism school, I had this professor who told us to, like, ‘verify our sources’? I just thought it was the right thing to do. So I did contact some international agencies, some of whom questioned the DOD’s claim about drone attacks never harming an innocent person. My editor assigned the story to another reporter and his story was live within ten minutes.”

“I can see now that I’ve made a mistake. And I’m sorry.”

“I have learned a valuable lesson about how journalism works in the real world, especially the vital importance of timely reporting in an internet-driven news environment.”