When a media outlet enters into an arrangement to republish another’s stories, there’s always a risk that errors in the original and any subsequent updates will go unnoticed.
Such was the case with the Sydney Morning Herald‘s republication of the Washington Post‘s coverage of an Iranian drone incursion into Israeli airspace and the subsequent Israeli military response.
While the WaPo only took a few hours to update its story to correct the inaccurate claim that the Iranian drone was downed over Syrian territory, the SMH failed to follow suit.
Aside from a simple factual error which should be corrected on those grounds alone, the mistaken claim that the drone was shot down in Syrian territory is serious enough to skew the entire narrative of the story. After all, if the drone had not been over Israeli airspace, it would have been far harder for Israel to justify its actions.
We contacted SMH editors who responded by changing the text of the story as the Washington Post had already done – making it clear that the drone had been shot down in Israeli territory.
