NME says sorry to Morrissey

As the libel hearing over the Morrissey grumbling about British identity court case gets closer, the NME has published a statement which sort-of says sorry while sighing that they never meant he was racist:

In December 2007, we published an article entitled 'Morrissey: Big mouth strikes again'.

Following this, Morrissey began proceedings for libel against us. His complaint is that we accused him of being a racist off the back of an interview which he gave to the magazine. He believes the article was edited in such a way that made him seem reactionary.

We wish to make clear that we do not believe that he is a racist; we didn’t think we were saying he was and we apologise to Morrissey if he or anyone else misunderstood our piece in that way. We never set out to upset Morrissey and we hope we can both get back to doing what we do best.

Morrissey and the NME getting back to what they do best? Presumably they mean living off past glories?