Correction of the day. The Sydney Morning Herald has found itself in a bit of hot water, judging by a correction this morning.  Late last month the paper wrote a story about a teacher at prestigious Sydney boys’ school St Aloysius College who has been accused of having sex with boys at the school. Although the SMH did not name the teacher, it did include identifying details such as what subjects she taught and her age. But according to this morning’s correction, those details were incorrect and identified the wrong teacher …

SMH apology

Cater hates/loves Assange. Australian columnist Nick Cater, who rails against “gatekeepers”, has signed on enthusiastically to Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s “home-team” argument regarding the ABC asylum seeker burns story, implying that anyone critical of his country is disloyal to it. Julian Assange gets singled out for special treatment. Though the Australian government refused to replace his passport, Assange is, according to Cater‘s column on Tuesday, “stateless by choice”, a postmodern something something. Furthermore, he’s enabled by a treacherous intelligentsia. Who could these people be? Well, step forward Nick Cater, opinion-page supremo at the Oz when the paper published the op-ed “Don’t Shoot the Messenger for Revealing Uncomfortable Truths”  by, erm, Julian Assange, on December 8, 2010.

WikiLeaks had just started releasing a quarter of a million diplomatic cables from the “cablegate” archive, and News Limited globally was desperate to get its hands on some, which were going out through rivals The Guardian, New York Times and Fairfax. So for a while Assange was flattered and published in the Times and the Oz in the hope of gaining a few of these allegedly illegally obtained documents detailing US duplicity and conniving over four decades — and Australia’s deep dependence on it. Loyalty, much? To Rupert Murdoch, yes — the man who gave up his Australian passport to be a US citizen, a pretty postmodern something something. — Guy Rundle

Australian Property Review? Should The Australian Financial Review change its name to The Australian Property Review? This morning’s paper carried a recent record 17 pages of property ads and accompanying stories. That was more than 28% of the 60-page edition of the paper,which is printed by Fairfax Media. There were more pages devoted to covering the press releases and other ephemera of the property sector than the 12 pages of reporting on finance, companies and markets. Including the tables pages, the AFR could only manage 16 pages of coverage of the paper’s core subject, finance and companies — the reason why it was established 50 years ago and why people still buy it now (in diminishing numbers). The page count excludes the four-page centre liftout on small business cashflow, built around a couple of ads. On Tuesday, the AFR carried seven pages of property coverage. That was 14.5% share of the 48-page edition. — Glenn Dyer

Video of the Day. Some bright sparks have hit on a new way to sheet home the blame for climate denialism …

That’s right, name extreme storms after policy makers who deny climate change is real. Can someone please make an Australian version — with pollies who are standing in the way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions? Brace yourself for Cyclone Tony Abbott, while Hurricane Steve Fielding sweeps in from the west. People are sheltering from super-storm Ron Boswell as the cleanup from Hurricane John Howard drags on, all these years later.