Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Let's Play Guess the Cooker

Sniff!Oval Ball: I know I shouldn't post excerpts from Crikey's newsletter verbatim, but I'll do it with a link to their subscription page (seriously, I highly recommend it).

They've shed some light on the leaked AFL player names (you know, the ones who tested positive twice). Anyone here heard any further on this?
How the names of three drug-taking AFL players got out
By Anthony Stavrinos

There's been quite a kerfuffle over the story set to run in The Smage last week about three AFL players who had twice tested positive for use of illicit recreational substances.

A key part of the story by Jacqueline Magnay – the names of the three players – had to be removed after the AFL took out an injunction against Fairfax and the rest of the media, to keep the trio's identities hush hush.

The saga will return to Victoria's Supreme Court on Wednesday, but while the blanket ban on the players' names is in force, a cock-up has seen the players' names revealed to clients of media monitoring company Media Monitors.

Media Monitors has an arrangement with Fairfax in which it is sent a copy of the electronic page proofs from its newspapers at the same time as they are sent to the publisher's printing facilities. That feeds into an automated system which delivers the relevant information to clients – before the paper has even been printed.

So when the injunction was enforced on Thursday evening, the page proofs had already been sent to the company before last minute alterations to the AFL story.

Understandably reluctant to draw attention to the names it has fought so hard to remove from public circulation, the AFL was guarded in its comments. "There was feed on our media monitoring service, it was from a newspaper and it was removed,” a spokeswoman told Crikey.

Senior deputy editor of The Age, Paul Ramadge wanted to make it clear the unfortunate mistake had nothing to do with his paper. “My understanding is that Media Monitors got access to a version of the story off a Sydney Morning Herald page, not an Age page”, he told Crikey. “The story did not make any editions of The Age.”

Crikey has the players' names, but we can't publish them – the Supreme Court injunction covers all media.
Now, to make this post completely lazy, some quick links:
'Til next time... (and if I haven't told you about the Final 8 Tipping Contest, comment me).

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