June 23, 2003
SYDNEY MORNING/AFTERNOON/EVENING/WHATEVER HERALD
Did the Sydney Morning Herald lie? ABC Watch alleges that last Friday’s report on Andrew Wilkie’s appearance before a British parliamentary inquiry was written before Wilkie actually made his appearance:
It reported Wilkie as having given evidence when in fact it was reporting only Wilkie's untested assertions available to them, and the rest of us, before the Select Committee sat. Unfortunately, the British Parliament is inconsiderate enough to meet overnight, Sydney time ...
According to the Herald report, written before the event, Wilkie "has told a British Parliamentary enquiry" about Australian Government exaggerations. And so on, all in the past tense.
It pretends the Herald correspondent was there to hear Wilkie's evidence being presented.
This matters, as ABC Watch writes, because Wilkie’s eventual appearance did not go unchallenged, as the Herald report implies. Guess we’ll have to wait for Media Watch to tell us the full story.
Posted by Tim Blair at June 23, 2003 05:57 AMlucky for the Herald he actually turned up. What if he'd scarpered/been struck down by mystery virus/required immediate brain surgery & thus wasn't able to appear. What then, eh?
Posted by: wen at June 23, 2003 at 09:57 AM