The Australian published a s-s-s-so-sob story:
IT is not easy watching one of your reporters get done over by Media Watch. Particularly when you have worked with the bloke for the best part of 20 years and not once had reason to question his journalistic integrity. But there was something about last Monday night's mauling of Stuart Rintoul more troubling still.
Rintoul has done some great work over the past month examining the vexed issues of sea rise projections and the response of coastal councils to the risk of future inundation.
He exposed ludicrous planning laws stifling development at Port Albert, a fishing village on Victoria's Bass Coast. Those laws are currently being torn up by the Baillieu government.
He brought to national attention research by NSW researcher Phil Watson showing that sea levels around Australia over the past 100 years haven't risen as quickly as scientists would have expected them to as a result of global warming.
For the first story he received the gratitude of a frustrated coastal community. For the second story he was pilloried, first in obscure, left-leaning blogs and finally on national television, for misrepresenting scientific research for "partisan political" purposes….[my emphasis]
Take a well-deserved bow Deltoid (then and now) – as well as every other blog (including NCV here) who commented on Rintoul’s ‘opinion’ piece before Media Watch administered the coup de grâce on 1 August 2011.
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