The Philadelphia Inquirer was bathing in boiling water as soon as its Dec. 12 editorial "Poverty and Norplant" hit the press. Soon they were drowning in the hot stuff after the appearance of their printed apology.

Like many journalists, I was disappointed at first by the appearance of the apology. It seemed to mark the start of breaking journalism's backbone. Isn't an editorial supposed to cause controversy?

But, after closely reading both the editorial and the apology, I've realized that in journalism, just as in any business, there's a place for apologies.

The Dec. 12 editorial linked the U.S. Food and Drug Adminstration's approval of Norplant, a contraceptive surgically inserted in a woman's arm and effective for five years, with a black research organization's report that found nearly half the nation's black children live in poverty.

The editorial drew these two stories from the previous day's paper and contended that the advent of Norplant could reduce the amount of children, specifically black children, born into poverty. The editorial further suggested free implants for poverty-stricken women and welfare incentives to draw them in.

The next day the Inquirer was in chaos.

A fiery in-house meeting was held and some Inquirer staffers were reportedly in tears. One staff member, who was from a large poor black family, interpreted the editorial to mean she had no right to be born. It came out that four editorial writers had originally opposed the edit, but editorial editors, Donald Kimmelman and David R. Boldt, published it anyway.

So, on Dec. 23, in place of the regularly scheduled editorial, the Inquirer filled the upper left hand corner with an apology. It called the "Norplant and poverty" edit "misguided" and "wrongheaded."

The story shot out like sonar to other publications who questioned the rationale of a newspaper apologizing for its opinion. The front page story in The Welcomat, a local Philadelphia paper, charged that the "thought police" were roaming the halls of the Inquirer. The article said the commotion over the editorial "represents a concerted effort to silence the only voices at that paper which diverge occasionally from what many black leaders and writers have certified as acceptable opinion."

But the Inquirer did not buckle under to pressure from black staff members at the paper, instead it took responsibility for its actions. Judging by the reactions of those staffers who opposed the edit, the editorial board could not pass over their concerns in good conscience. Any business would apologize for an action that severed ties with its employees and alienated its community.

The original editorial was badly written and insensitive. While the writers intended to be progressive by linking two current news items, they did not think about the possible repercussions. Two sentences showed the authors' apprehension about the subject: "As we read those two stories, we asked ourselves: Dare we mention them in the same breath?" and "All right, the subject makes us uncomfortable, too." It seems that even Kimmelman and Boldt had second thoughts about writing on this topic.

The editorial's focus on the black race is unfair. One line said, "More whites than blacks live in poverty, though poor blacks make up a higher percentage of people who are more or less permanently on welfare." The editorial should have focused on poverty without racial overtones.

The same point could have been made without continuing unfair assumptions that black people exist in society as a welfare burden. Their point about Norplant revolutionizing family planning and helping control poverty would have been better swallowed.

But the connection itself raises many questions. The subhead on the editorial was "Can contraception reduce the underclass?" It isn't fair to suggest that the poor do not have the right to live. Many great people have emerged with great strength from the burden of poverty. Wiping out the underclass will not solve our nation's problems.

People are allowed an opinion but the editorial writers at the Inquirer have an obligation to deliver responsibly written editorials. In this case, the apology is acceptable because it doesn't rescind its opinion but apologizes for the fuzzy way it was presented. Because there was a huge gap between the editorial's intended meaning and its readers' interpretation, the writers needed to clarify their statements.

The apology states, "Most fundamentally in linking the issues of race and contraception, we left too many people with the impression that our cure for poverty was to reduce the number of black people. Although that certainly was not what we meant to suggest, the fact that so many people interpreted it that way is a clear indication that the editorial was fatally flawed."

The editorial board did not take back their intentions, just the misfired attempt at presenting them. Is this any different than a manufacturer taking back a broken product or a chef diluting a too spicy dish?

There is a place for apologies in the media. There are real people behind those typewritten words. Accepting responsibility and apologizing when it is warranted will bring those in the media closer to their readers. To err is human, to apologize is even more human.