Unsupervised. Always.

At around 8am this morning (May 21), the Facebook page where The Age promotes itself posted a short item linking to sensational allegations featuring in that newspaper’s coverage of Victoria’s ongoing child sex-abuse inquiry, now sitting in Ballarat. Above, a screen grab of the Facebook item.

“Die Pell” is the heading — and it remained the heading until the link was taken down more than an hour later. Somehow no one noticed those two prominent words — or, if they did, deemed the sentiment to be fair comment. The fact that Fairfax has dispensed with experienced subs and editors, replacing them with cheap-to-hire hipster youths, might just have something to do with it.

Age editor Andrew Holden prefers to believe the Facebook page was hacked, but has instituted an internal investigation to assure himself that no Age reporter was responsible for such unauthorised editorialising. That possibility, he told 3AW’s Neil Mitchell, was unthinkable.

Unthinkable, perhaps, but only to the likes Holden, who must never read his own paper. That is one thing he can be said to have in common with millions of other Melbournians.

Follow the link below for another Age story that has disappeared without trace: the bodies of murdered infants alleged to have been buried in the grounds of what was once a Ballarat orphanage.

Read More