ANU Death Threats a final request

The Australian's editorial in today's paper makes a simple request: Correct your errors, Mr Holmes

"IT'S no surprise that the ABC's Media Watch has no bite when it comes to scrutinising the national broadcaster's own news coverage. On Monday night it lost its bark as well. Host Jonathan Holmes fell silent over an issue that he bungled badly the week before -- the ABC's erroneous report in June last year that: "Several of Australia's top climate change scientists at the Australian National University have been subjected to a campaign of death threats, forcing the university to tighten security."

The sensationalised story, which followed up a report in The Canberra Times, gained such wide airplay on radio, on television and online that it was picked up internationally by The Guardian and the scientific journal Nature, fuelling a perception that climate sceptics are dangerous fanatics.

The problem was that a crucial element of the story was wrong, which the ABC now concedes -- sort of -- in a "clarification" buried deep on its website. It is yet to correct the record on radio or television....We expect him to correct his mistakes next Monday."

Apparently "Media Watch tries to monitor some of the major media outlets but there's no way our small team can keep track of all the media's crazy and unethical behaviour or even all the stories that are just plain wrong.We rely on tip-offs from our audience for many of our stories. If you know something about the media that we should know, please fill out the form below."

Here's a link to that form, why not help them out. Tip offs