The Australian is due for an embarrassing retraction

over a front-page story attacking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the World Wildlife Fund for an “unsubstantiated” claim that 40% of the Amazon rainforest would be wiped out by global warming. But will they put it on the front page where the misinformation occurred????
The story, by Sunday Times journalist Jonathan Leake, was exposed as a sham in a retraction published in The Australian's sister paper and brokered by the UK Press Complaints Commission. The complaint, lodged by Royal Society scientist Dr Simon Lewis, claimed The Times published “inaccurate, misleading or distorted information” and the complaints commission agreed.
On February 1 this year, one day after the Sunday Times ran the story, The Australian put it on the front page. The story said that the claims of Amazon destruction were based on the views of “green campaigners who had no scientific expertise”.
The “scandal”, dubbed “Amazongate”, was repeated across the media, including ABC's Radio National (The World Today), 2GB's Alan Jones and The Sydney Morning Herald.

Part of the Sunday Times apology reads:“In fact, the IPCC's Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence. In the case of the WWF report, the figure had, in error, not been referenced, but was based on research by the respected Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) which did relate to the impact of climate change.”

The papers infuriated Dr. Lewis by falsely quoting him. Lewis approached the media regulator demanding an apology from the paper, and the story's removal from The Sunday Times website. “We accept that Dr Lewis holds no such view rather, he was concerned that the use of non-peer-reviewed sources risks creating the perception of bias and unnecessary controversy, which is unhelpful in advancing the public's understanding of the science of climate change. A version of our article that had been checked with Dr Lewis underwent significant late editing and so did not give a fair or accurate account of his views on these points. We apologise for this.”

“Amazongate” came right after the notorious “Climategate” fracas, covered extensively in The Australian, that exposed leaked emails sent by climate scientists from the University of East Anglia. Those emails have been the subject of several investigations now and the consensus is there was nothing unprofessional in their content.

News Limited columnists, including Andrew Bolt, revelled in these controversial stories. In a blog post titled “Now the IPCC sexed up the Amazonian danger, too”, Bolt accused the panel of publishing “wild scare-claims, many based on unchecked statements by activist groups”.

Besides the fact this national news paper was wrong in a way suggesting an editorial bias, their influence was spread across the media spectrum in Australia. Even to the ABC. Numerous blogs and websites picked up the item and spread it in a way that makes the story appear beyond repute, but it wasn’t.

For International Readers; The Australian Prime Minister was recently deposed in a party coup, largely because of the perception that a new tax he had proposed on the excessive profits of the mining industry would cause loss of jobs and overall weakening of the national economy. Whilst the former PM was responsible for a shopping list of bad legislation and irresponsible government, this is the one thing he may have had right but... he didn’t have media on side.. big mistake and the facts were the first casualty of that war, his political career the second.

From a report at www.crikey.com.au; “In 2008/09, the Australian mining industry had a EBITDA/Revenue ratio of 43% while the worlds largest 40 mining companies had a comparable estimate of 30%
When mining companies in Australia say that their investment in mining will cease domestically as a result of the Resource Super Profits Tax (RSPT), they are effectively stating that their firm will not exploit these immobile, finite resources which make up to nearly 40% of the total global supply of these minerals.
Should we care if companies like Fortescue, Xstrata or Clive Palmer's operations pull the plug or cease investment?
With profit margins that high in Australia compared to the profit margins that other domestic industries in Australia receive, and with EBITDA/Revenue ratios much higher in Australia compared to what the largest global miners are receiving around the world (especially considering that a part of these global earnings ratios are slightly boosted by Australian operations), even under a worse case RSPT scenario where mining profits in Australia take a significant haircut ( a dubious argument at best considering the design of the tax), for every noisy mining interest in Australia that walks away, there will, literally, be an army of mining investment and general investment lining up to take their place.
Our profits and our resources are simply too good an opportunity to pass up even if the profit margins involved in Australia are seriously reduced. When the noisy miners say that their capital is mobile, they are dead right their capital is indeed mobile, but in exactly the same way that every other mining firm's capital is mobile, including the capital of the worlds largest 40 miners.
With industry profits in Australia so high compared to both other domestic industries and the largest 40 global miners, with Australia owning a substantial piece of the worlds immobile and finite accessible mineral resources, Big Dirt walking away from Australian investment will be their loss, not ours because someone else will simply take their place.
Big Dirt welcome to capitalism.”

 In February of 2007, The Coastal Passage was preparing another article on Australian Customs service. As a normal part of fair coverage, Customs website was regularly looked up. During that period, A Google search of “Australian Customs” turned up a first page that listed three web pages from the TCP web site that were disparaging of customs....

It was remembered at the time that this must have been very annoying for the customs people. It was apparent that the pages from The Coastal Passage were probably getting more activity than Custom’s own site. This may have been the case in that the TCP website was more informative at that time. The Customs website then had contradictory and inaccurate information.

Then one day in March the pages from The Coastal Passage disappeared off Google. Not back a couple pages but the articles that had been first page vanished. Other search engines like Lycos, MS Live Search, and others retained TCP position for some time but with Google not referring, the pages eventually slipped on all search engines.

At that time, TCP sent fax’s to Google in California and Sydney asking for Google’s comment on this but received no denial.

It was finally revealed in a parliamentary debate in June that indeed, the Australian government has been spending “millions” on Google to direct searches. TCP would suggest that those funds could have been involved in the above situation. This would amount to the government using taxpayer monies to interfere with freedom of the press.