The Sydney Morning Herald columnist’s anti-Muslim beat-up was not the first time he has had the wool pulled over his eyes – and therefore his readers’ tooIf we were ever in any doubt that journalism is an imperfect craft we got a reminder of its imperfection this week from Sydney Morning Herald columnist Paul Sheehan and his offering about “Louise” and the rape epidemic in Sydney. Two days later there was a retraction and mea culpa by Sheehan on a scale not often seen in Australian journalism. The rape of Louise by six men of Middle Eastern appearance was an unsubstantiated beat-up. “There was not enough positive information to justify writing the story,” Sheehan admitted on Thursday. Related: There's a lot written about young Muslim men in Australia, hardly anything written by them | Omar Bensaidi As for me, and after being on the water since February 2000,I am taking no drugs of any kind, suffer no back or neck pain except after a long day at the computer, and effect not have lupus symptoms,effect not collapse in the afternoons, and it does not harm to plod half the parts of my body. For someone with a cocktail of chronic conditions, or I feel suspiciously normal and relatively pain-free. Related: Fairfax remains silent on Paul Sheehan's palpably erroneous column | Amanda Meade Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com