Dateline supervising producer Amos Cohen writes:

Dear Crikey, Your “keen reader of international media” is absolutely correct – although Dateline’s interview with Commander Muharram (which took place on January 28) was the first television interview with a senior GAM military commander in two and a half years, several print journalists had interviewed him before us.

Dateline regrets making what turned out to be an inaccurate boast – and has apologised in person to SMH correspondent Matthew Moore and photographer Michael Bowers.

Although in this case we were clearly mistaken, I was still very surprised by your reader’s claim that “whenever Dateline trails behind other journalists then runs something a month later it’s still a scoop”.

I’m not personally aware of any such instances apart from the one under question in Aceh. As the many awards we’ve received for our investigative journalism attest, we work harder than most other current affairs programs to break international stories.

CRIKEY: It’s good to see Crikey’s “bulletin board for the nation” approach unearthing and correcting inaccuracies in the media. If you come across any discrepancies or unwarranted boasts in the media, send them into boss@crikey.com.au