SMH wrong again

Bob Meade writes:

Today's Sydney Morning Herald has a minor editorial piece, "Giving Sydney the green light." It's on page 30 of the paper.  It's meant to be a snide article about the traffic disruption being caused in Sydney wherever President Bush goes.  Specifically the (traditionally) anonymous writer refers to yesterday's journey by President Bush  "to the National Maritime Museum to visit the bell from HMAS Canberra ..."

However as you know from my piece here, and Mackenzie Gregory's account here, the bell Pres. bush visited is the ship's bell from the USS Canberra, a United States Ship named at the direction of President Roosevelt in honor of the HMAS Canberra.  HMAS (His Majesty's Australian Ship) Canberra  was sunk in the Battle of Savo Island on the 9th of August, 1942 with the loss of 84 Officers and Men.

The ship's bell of HMAS Canberra can be safely assumed to be resting in the ship's watery grave at

Why waste time with fact-checking, eh? If you pointed this out to the editorial writer the response would probably be - 'yeah, whatever'.

Comments

[Bob Meade]

Indeed Trev.

I always try to give a right of reply on my low-visibility blog, and sent an email to the address the SMH editorial page provides soliciting reader feedback pointing out the error.

I received an automated response containing this line which made my feedback seem very worthwhile and wanted:

"PLEASE NOTE: This is an automated response. Due to the volume of mail we receive, we cannot respond to every comment, but endeavour to answer reasonable inquiries, investigate possible inaccuracies and act on complaints."

Still waiting Trevor, but as a self-preservation measure I am not holding my breath.

[Trevor Cook]

Sounds like they are flooded with correspondence pointing out their errors - hardly confidence-building!

[Bob Meade]

The Sydney Morning Herald have now graciously corrected the error online, and appended a note to their print archives.

The corrected version is here:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/editorial/for-a-distracted-superpower-apec-looks-like-a-nuisance/2007/09/06/1188783417364.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Looks like they take these things seriously.