The Toothless Tiger known as the APC, and the toothless ambition of Delimiter ...

(Above: an actual visible correction, with a lovely juxtaposition, more at Crikey).

Speaking of catching up with the Daily Terror's nefarious doings, a kindly reader sent the pond a link to Mumbrella's story For proof the Press Council is a toothless tiger, see the bottom of page 104 of the Tele.

Mumbrella's story hit the intertubes on December 26th last year - oh it seems a lifetime ago - and the Terror's publication of the APC adjudication hit page 104 of the Boxing Day edition of the Daily Telegraph.

And the APC facilitated this cavalier treatment by publishing its adjudication three days before Xmas on 22nd December 2011, when the silly season is in full flight.

It turns out the Terror produced three stories in June and July of 2011 which contained errors deserving a reprimand:

The Council expressed concern that within a short period of time three articles on the same theme contained inaccurate or misleading assertions. It considers that this sequence of errors should not have occurred and that they should have been corrected promptly and adequately when brought to the newspaper’s attention.

In the good old days, people were fond of quoting William Gladstone's old saw Justice delayed is justice denied, but truth to tell, on a daily basis you could discover the Murdoch press getting facts wrong in their relentless campaign against the NBN, knowing that all they face - six months or more down the track - is flaying by lettuce leaf, or the odd tut tutting or cluck clucking tucked away at in a spot entirely unrelated to the prominence given the original crime, perhaps with bonus Xmas season tinsel.

The kicker that got the pond really agitated?

Well it was Renai LeMay's righteously goose-laden response on 27th December to Mumbrella's story, in a way which is more thinly veiled self-promotion than articulate understanding of the situation at hand:

hey Tim,
you’re right that the Tele buried this one, but I don’t think this is evidence that we need more regulation of the press.
I argued in my submission to the Media Inquiry (here in PDF format: http://bit.ly/s2qV1M) that independent media is playing a strong role in editorially correcting the mistakes of mainstream media. The publication of your article and mine about this issue, in my opinion, go quite a ways towards indicating that this kind of ‘industry self-regulation’ is functioning at some level.

Hey Renai, thanks for the link to your submission, but actually the point is that the APC is a toothless tiger, and the Terror a rogue rag, and there actually is already regulation of newspaper behaviour, of a soft-core self-regulatory kind, and it isn't up to the readers of the Daily Terror to head off to your online rag the Delimiter - much as you'd love the hits - to find corrections to the garbage they consume daily, but instead to find the corrections in the Daily Terror.

And damned if it wouldn't help if the corrections were published somewhere other than page 104 on Boxing Day - you know, like an actual prominent position saying We Wuz Wrong - and a helluva lot closer to the actual date of the crime.

But do go on with your feisty if profoundly foolish self-promotion:

Delimiter’s article on the Tele’s NBN inaccuracies can be found here: http://bit.ly/sXguCg

Do Delimiter and Mumbrella have the Tele’s audience? No. However, Despite the fact that it was published on Christmas Eve (a Saturday), our article alone has pulled in more than 4,500 page impressions over the Christmas period and 36 reader comments — indication that people are indeed interested to see what the Tele got wrong.

We see this behaviour quite a lot in the much more mature new media market in the US as well.

Renai LeMay

Editor + Publisher, Delimiter

Hey Renai, thanks for that link on the Tele's inaccuracies in relation to the NBN, that really hit the mark and thank the lord, the pond has finally caught up with it in the New Year.

By golly that's really put the Murdoch house in order, and by golly, the mature new media market in the US is doing a wonderful job correcting all of Fox New's egregious errors.

4,500 impressions and 36 readers' comments. Wow.

By golly, the pond can feel chairman Rupert shivering and quaking in his boots. Who needs the APC - or an effective regulator to hold the minions of Murdoch to telling the truth in newspaper stories - when Daily Terror readers can rush off to Delimiter for their corrections, and all's well in the world ...

cheers

Dorothy Parker

Editor + Publisher Loon Pond

For what it's worth, the three stories published by the Terror are Australian taxpayers' latest NBN horror show (by Gemma Jones), Join the NBN or you'll be digging deep (exclusive by Geoff Chambers), and Low interest in high speed internet (also by Gemma Jones), but where would Delimiter, the APC and the general reader be if Jamie Benaud hadn't bothered to go through the onerous process of complaining to the APC?

Jamie Benaud? Would that be the same Jamie Benaud who turned up on Big Mal's blog to provide 10 Responses to "Labor's Budget Misleads on the NBN".

There's a link on that name that takes the reader to Jamie Benaud, Blue Mountains photographer.

And it turns out this same Jamie Benaud is the son of cricketer John Benaud and a firefighter fed up with the flaming News Limited papers have directed at the NBN. (According to Press Council finds News Limited misled over NBN, at itnews).

Why you can even find this rare feisty Benaud bird firefighter/hazmat technician/photographer at Australian images at Linkedin.

Who knows if it's one and the same - the pond takes to investigative reporting like a loon to water - but whoever Jamie Benaud is, he's the real hero of the story, and not the self-congratulatory Renai LeMay.

Without Benaud bunging on a do, Delimiter would have let these NBN balls (Murdoch balls-ups if you will) go through to the keeper.

Well played sir.

And now because only Sydney siders understand the true horror of the Daily Terror, and because we always like to look on the lighter sight of life, Sydney siders will be shocked and appalled to learn Monorail likely to go in tourism revamp.

Time for a song, and if you like, instead of monorail, insert the words 'Daily Terror' into the lyrics. You know, like what this town needs is a Daily Terror ...