Herald Sun apologises for Logies leak but continues to claim story did not appear on its website
Screenshot of Herald Sun website featuring Logies story it says did not appear on website
The Herald Sun has withdrawn its suggestion that its leak of Hamish Blake winning the gold Logie was because Google had accessed an unpublished story.
However, the newspaper has continued to insist that the news story did not appear on its website.
The newspaper last night issued an apology. Meanwhile, today’s Sydney Morning Herald reports that seven Herald Sun staffers were “frogmarched” out of the ceremony after the result leaked.
So far, TV Week, which organises the Logies, has declined to comment,
Last night, the Herald Sun issued a statement saying:
‘The Herald Sun regrets that, due to an internal error involving publishing protocols, we effectively named the Gold Logie winner ahead of time last night.
“We apologise and hope it did not ruin viewers’ overall Logies experience.
“The story was not published on the Herald Sun website or m-site or Tweeted by a Herald Sun employee. However, when it was placed into a holding environment to be pushed live after the embargo was lifted, the story inadvertently was able to be indexed by Google and therefore became searchable.
“Google is in no way responsible for what happened. We did not intend to imply any error on Google’s behalf.
“In effect, a page that was meant to be hidden, that was never intended to see the light of day until after an embargo was lifted at 12midnight, was inadvertently published to the web and became searchable via Google. A story does not have to appear on our website to be available to search engines.
“During the live testing, a link to an embargoed story naming the winner was momentarily created (by the Herald Sun) and (became searchable) by Google.
“The error was certainly accidental in that there was no deliberate intention to break the strict Logies embargo.”
Yesterday editor Simon Pristel had told Triple M: “The all powerful Google has gone in and found something.”
It is relatively commonplace for news organisations to be given awards results under embargo in order that they can appear in the following day’s newspapers.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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“Google is in no way responsible for what happened. We did not intend to imply any error on Google’s behalf.”
Odd. Yesterday, they quite exlicitly claimed Google had gone into their “internal systems”, taken the embargoed story, and published it. Can’t wait for the next revision!
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I’d be surprised to learn that the Sun Herald even had seven staff… You mean Herald Sun.
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@Jason: I’d be surprised if the Sun Herald had seven readers.
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