THE AMAZING VANISHING AGE ARTICLE

Earlier today while making my regular round of Australia's online newspapers I came across an Age article titled "Japanese whalers accused of butchery". The article featured Greens Senator Bob Brown raving about Japanese whalers being D grade butchers – as I remember it Brown was responding to someone connected with Japanese whalers characterizing Greenpeace's anti-whaling activities as a D grade publicity stunt. The article also had Brown saying something about the killing of whales being repulsive because they are warm-blooded animals.

I immediately started looking for images of cute little lambs and calves to attach to a post lampooning Brown's comments. After finding images of appropriately cute little critters I returned to the butchery article only to find it radically changed. The article that had started:

Greens leader Bob Brown has accused Japanese whalers of being D-grade butchers masquerading as scientists. Senator Brown said Japan's ...

Now reads:

Greenpeace has defended its anti-whaling tactics in the Southern Ocean after several days of close quarters sparring with a Japanese whaling fleet.

And Brown's butchery comment has been removed:

"The issue of sound management and sustainability of whale stocks are far too important to be sidetracked by a D grade public relations campaign," Dr Hatanaka said.

Greens Senator Bob Brown responded saying Greenpeace protesters had in fact demonstrated A grade courage.

"Their protest has succeeded in drawing worldwide attention to the Japanese slaughter of these beautiful warm-blooded and defenceless mammals," he said.

"Their ship the Keiko Maru was too ashamed to put into Hobart on Christmas Eve."

Now I know the amazing morphing article isn't my imagination because a Google News search yields this – the original title is embedded in its address but the link takes you to the replacement. A search of the Age's archive using keywords from the original title, "Japanese whalers accused of butchery", does not bring up the original article, indicating that it no longer exists. Interestingly, both the replacement article and the original show the exact same posting time, 3:29 PM. That's impossible unless the original was online for less than a minute before being replaced.

There's something funny going on at the Age; it'll be interesting to see what they have to say in response to the email I sent them.

Update: The Google News search (above) now links to an article in The Advertiser that has the same opening as the original in the Age but with an interesting omission of its own:

GREENS leader Bob Brown has accused Japanese whalers of being D-grade butchers masquerading as scientists.

Senator Brown said yesterday Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research called Greenpeace's anti-whaling protest D-grade public relations, when, in fact, Greenpeace protesters had demonstrated A-grade courage.

"Their protest has succeeded in drawing worldwide attention to the Japanese slaughter of these . . . defenceless mammals," he said. Senator Brown said whaling in the name of science was a shameful abuse and an affront to science.

Someone must have realised how silly it is to say "warm-blooded and defenceless mammals".