New White House press secretary Sean Spicer's angry tirade against White House reporters on his first day on the job wasn't his first clash with the press: while in student government he brought a complaint against his college paper after it called him 'Sean Sphincter.'
The 1993 article, which was uncovered by DailyMail.com, offers the first confrontation in what may prove to be contentious relations with the 'dishonest media' despised by Spicer's boss, President Donald Trump.
'They said it was spell check error,' one former College Voice staffer recalls. 'It just never got caught.'
Spicer didn't buy it, and demanded an apology – and more.
In an angry letter to the paper, he responded, 'I am writing in response to the article in the April 26 edition of the Voice in which my name was "misspelled".'
Contrary to the paper's claim that it was a mistake, Spicer called it 'a malicious and intentional attack,' the Washington Post noted in a profile in August.
'The First Amendment does uphold the right to free speech, however, this situation goes beyond the bounds of free speech,' he added.
Spicer didn't just complain – he in effect sued the paper by bringing a complaint before the college Judiciary Council, recalls then-publisher of the paper, Jon Finnimore.
Spicer blasted at the paper in his letter: 'The response that I received from the publication was that [it] was [an] unintentional mistake which they rectified with a correction,’ Spicer wrote. ‘Maybe I am not all that familiar with the production of a “newspaper,” but I am really not sure how this can be explained as unintentional.’
He continued: ‘I find this notion of the paper subscribing to professional standards rather silly considering the weekly habit of misspellings, misquotes, and half-truths. If the paper is indeed in the habit of using professional standards, maybe they should start to write and report like professionals.’
'For those of us who were involved with student government, for those of us involved with the student newspaper it was a big deal,' Finnimore said when contacted by DailyMail.com. The council had the ability to boot students off campus.
Finnimore, who is now a technology manager at job site Monster.com, said that when the author wrote the infamous article in 1993, an early version of autocorrect had changed 'Spicer' to 'sphincter.'
The author kept it in as a way to get a laugh out of editors. 'We all took the paper copy and marked it with an editor mark saying, 'change this,' Finnimore said. 'We put 'ha ha' or 'funny,' but marked it this must be changed.'
But all through the chain, 'none of us actually changed it.'
More than two decades later, Finnimore acknowledged, 'We made a mistake. We definitely screwed up.' But it is Spicer's furious response that sticks with him.
The 1993 article, which was uncovered by DailyMail.com, offers the first confrontation in what may prove to be contentious relations with the 'dishonest media' despised by Spicer's boss, President Donald Trump.
'They said it was spell check error,' one former College Voice staffer recalls. 'It just never got caught.'
Spicer didn't buy it, and demanded an apology – and more.
In an angry letter to the paper, he responded, 'I am writing in response to the article in the April 26 edition of the Voice in which my name was "misspelled".'
Contrary to the paper's claim that it was a mistake, Spicer called it 'a malicious and intentional attack,' the Washington Post noted in a profile in August.
'The First Amendment does uphold the right to free speech, however, this situation goes beyond the bounds of free speech,' he added.
Spicer didn't just complain – he in effect sued the paper by bringing a complaint before the college Judiciary Council, recalls then-publisher of the paper, Jon Finnimore.
Spicer blasted at the paper in his letter: 'The response that I received from the publication was that [it] was [an] unintentional mistake which they rectified with a correction,’ Spicer wrote. ‘Maybe I am not all that familiar with the production of a “newspaper,” but I am really not sure how this can be explained as unintentional.’
He continued: ‘I find this notion of the paper subscribing to professional standards rather silly considering the weekly habit of misspellings, misquotes, and half-truths. If the paper is indeed in the habit of using professional standards, maybe they should start to write and report like professionals.’
'For those of us who were involved with student government, for those of us involved with the student newspaper it was a big deal,' Finnimore said when contacted by DailyMail.com. The council had the ability to boot students off campus.
Finnimore, who is now a technology manager at job site Monster.com, said that when the author wrote the infamous article in 1993, an early version of autocorrect had changed 'Spicer' to 'sphincter.'
The author kept it in as a way to get a laugh out of editors. 'We all took the paper copy and marked it with an editor mark saying, 'change this,' Finnimore said. 'We put 'ha ha' or 'funny,' but marked it this must be changed.'
But all through the chain, 'none of us actually changed it.'
More than two decades later, Finnimore acknowledged, 'We made a mistake. We definitely screwed up.' But it is Spicer's furious response that sticks with him.