News Corp has egg on its face

News Corp’s The Australian newspaper website states of its Associate Editor Brad Norington (author of "Mystery of union chief's uni claim") that he has more than 30 years experience as a journalist. He was The Australian's Washington correspondent during the first term of the Obama administration, and then the paper's chief reporter in Sydney, tracking the real story behind disgraced corruption whistleblower Kathy Jackson and her partner Michael Lawler in a lengthy investigation series. He has written extensively on politics and industrial relations, and is the author of several books.

So the newspaper has no excuse for such inaccurate reporting prominently displayed as an “Exclusive” on its 29 March 2017 front page.

The Guardian, 30 March 2017:

The Australian newspaper has claimed that the union leader Sally McManus faked her CV when she said she was president of a university union for two years.

The story, headlined “Mystery of union chief’s uni claim”, said the ACTU secretary was “not elected to the student union council in any elections in 1991, 1992, 1993 or 1994”.

But her Macquarie University deputy student leader at the time and McManus herself have demolished the story, saying it was lacking in research and was the result of a mix-up between the student union and the student council.

Mark Greenhill, now the mayor of Blue Mountains council, said McManus was president of the Macquarie University student union. “I should know, I was her vice-president,” Greenhill said.

“Anyone aware of politics on Australian campuses in the 1990s would be aware, there was a separation between representative service and political bodies.

“A separate body, the Macquarie University student council, was the political body.”

The Australian’s associate editor, Brad Norington, who has written a series of articles critical of McManus, implied in an “exclusive” story that McManus had faked her experience on her professional profile on LinkedIn.

“The claim by ACTU secretary Sally McManus that she headed the student union at Macquarie University for more than two years is in dispute, with no records showing she ever held the post,” he wrote on the front page of the Australian.

“On her LinkedIn ‘experience’ profile, Ms McManus says she was president of the student union at North Ryde, in Sydney’s northwest, from August 1991 to August 1993, for ‘2yrs 1 mo’.”

The story was promoted by the Australian’s associate editor, Caroline Overington, on Twitter before an address by McManus at the National Press Club…..

The Australian addressed the error by publishing a second story on Wednesday afternoon with the headline “Sally McManus clarifies Macquarie Uni student union past”. The original story is still online.