Wednesday, August 02, 2006
LANE HANGS IN THERE
Sunday Age editor Peter Fray is still deciding whether to accept columnist Terry Lane’s resignation. Fray is slow to accept a lot of things. Meanwhile, the Age yesterday finally got around to yanking Lane’s column.
UPDATE. Andrew Bolt adds Terry Lane to the list.
UPDATE II. Lane survives:
Longstanding columnist Terry Lane will continue to be published by The Sunday Age despite being duped by a hoax internet video of an American claiming he had killed innocent women and children in Iraq.
The newspaper’s editor, Peter Fray, said yesterday he would review fact-checking procedures after Lane admitted that he had not checked the video of a man calling himself Jesse Macbeth, whose fakery, Fray said, “would have been found within 15 seconds”.
Fray said he would consider introducing a system of flagging in journalists’ copy those instances where material was sourced solely from the internet.
“Terry Lane has been a great servant of The Sunday Age and journalism over many years. His column last week was a low point for him and the paper. I have decided against accepting Terry’s offer to resign,” he said.
“He has been mortified by the week’s events and humiliated in public. I am confident he will check and double-check and triple-check his sources in the future.
“He has learned his lesson, as has this paper.”
Pathetic.
UPDATE III. Earlier reactions from Questions and Answers and New Sisyphus.
UPDATE IV. An earlier News Ltd report:
“It’s one almighty stuff-up,” Sunday Age editor Peter Fray said yesterday.
“I mean, there’s no other way of looking at it.
“Myself and Terry are embarrassed by the mistake.”
FLASHBACK. The Age Jim Schembri attacks blog commenters:
You seem totally oblivious to the possibility that I might feel “kind of serious” about the heaving torrents of professional and personal abuse you have been running about me on your blog for over a month.
These cascades of abuse and personal insults have flourished unfettered and unedited. They promote lies about me and my work and are crammed with inaccuracies because the principles of fact-checking, verification and accountability that usually accompany a journalist’s work have not been applied.
Those commenters accused by Schembri should apply for work at the Age. They evidently qualify.