Copyright 2005, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

Roadracing World has received press releases from some of Ben Attard’s sponsors claiming that he is from New Zealand.

The first sponsor to get it wrong was Kawasaki Motors Corp. in an announcement that Attard would join Josh Hayes on the Attack Kawasaki support team. Other sponsors have now repeated the mistake.

It is the policy of Roadracingworld.com to post press releases without correcting them, and to identify the item in question as being from a press release. Sometimes we add a wisecrack in the headline or intro line if we feel like it.

However, in this case, we’re tired of getting e-mails from readers all wound up about “your article” or “your story” about Ben Attard being wrong.

A press release is basically propaganda issued by a company, a team, a racer, a PR agency, etc. seeking publicity. Anything identified as being “From a press release” is not generated by Roadracingworld.com and the content is solely the responsibility of the issuing party.

We don’t post every press release we get, and decide which ones to post based on timeliness and a subjective judgement of news or entertainment value (if any). If parts of a press release are too commercial, i.e., include ordering or price information more suitable for a paid advertisement, we may delete those parts and post other parts of the release. Which is why the tagline says, “From a press release…” and not “A press release…”

To clarify, Ben Attard was born on September 11, 1980 in Sydney, Australia.

In other words, he is an Australian.