How to get published in The Age (major Oz paper required to publish pro-Muslim articles?)

Not so long ago, The Age made a rather costly mistake by identifying an entirely innocent Muslim lad as the teen terrorist who attacked two policemen in Melbourne, very nearly killing one of them. This sort of error is apt to happen when competent sub-editors are shown the door, replaced by cheap-to-hire, hip-dude children working under the supervision of the few older hands not quite sharp enough to have read the signs of a newspaper in terminal decline and landed jobs at the ABC.

Fairfax Media dug deep, slung the slandered kid a sum variously reported to be as much as $500,000 and even sent editor-in-chief Andrew Holden (that’s him, above on the far right, wearing the constipated grimace) to make an act of abject contrition at an outer-suburban mosque.

Could it be, as part of that reportedly whopping settlement, The Age also tossed in a slather of guaranteed column inches on its Opinion page?

I don't want to believe this is true. The Age is a major Australian newspaper - one of the two dailies in Australia's second largest city of Melbourne, and one of the two major left-wing papers in the country (along with its Sydney based sibling, the Sydney Morning Herald. If it has agreed to a court settlement with conditions like the ones implied, at the very least, that need to be public knowledge. As far as I know, no proof of that has been offered - but Quadrant is generally pretty careful and credible in what they write, and they wouldn't be suggesting this was even possible without some reason.

I think The Age's mistake in putting a photo of the wrong person on the front page of their newspaper as the terrorist who attempted to murder two police officers was appalling, and I absolutely believe that it is right they publish a full apology on the front page (which they did) and that they paid considerable compensation (which they did) for that mistake - but this would be something else entirely.

I hope they didn’t - but I can understand why the question is being asked.

It may have just been a one off - if the kid wants to be a journalist or something, having a by line on an article published in The Age would be nice to have on his resume. I wouldn’t have a major problem if in the circumstances, the Age told him they’d let him write something for them as a more concrete gesture to try and repair the damage they did to his reputation. But if it’s any type of long term agreement, they should definitely have to say so.

And if it’s not so, I hope they’ll come out and make that clear as well.

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