- media response to Pauline Hanson's maiden speech to Parliament
- excerpts from Pauline Hanson's maiden speech
Reports/Comment:
- ABC Radio National's Media Report poses the question: 'Is Pauline Hanson a simple fish-and-chip shop lady or a savvy media performer?' The Media Report's Agnes Warren comments
- Ray Martin's back announce on A Current Affair after Pauline Hanson declined the show's interview invitation
- ACA Producer, David Hurley, explains why the program declared its hand on the issue
- ABC TV's Acting Sydney Network News Editor, John Mulhall, explains the editorial decision not to cover the Hanson speech.
- Reader criticisms of bias in The Sydney Morning Herald's Letters to the Editor
Please note that none of the reports in the case studies have been the subject of complaints or queries under the Racial Hatred Act.
ACA Producer, David Hurley, explains why the program declared its hand on the issue:
Ordinarily we might not have had Ray say it as definitively as he did. I don't think it's up to us to give a philosophical or social view (about multiculturalism and Aboriginal issues) but, in this case, we thought it was better to be up front with Ray's view. We've never made a secret of his participation in the reconciliation movement but we also know the depth and breadth of the program we run here and no one could say we're running a cause. We've run a pretty fair mix on Aboriginal issues over the years.
We had a taped story anyway with the vox pops and bits of Hanson's speech and, right up to the last minute, we were moving heaven and earth to get her on. Until her office stated quite bluntly that she wouldn't do it because Ray was on the Reconciliation Council, they were saying time was a factor. That's hard to believe because she in the end did three separate interviews with the three state-based hosts of (Channel 7's) Today Tonight in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. That's unheard of in my experience - for a politician to go to the trouble of doing essentially the same interview three times for local versions of a program. When it became clear that she wasn't going to come on we figured we should explain why she wasn't on the program. Because establishing why she wasn't there led inexorably to where he stood, we chose to allow him to express his views. He hasn't done it often, but it has happened before.
In the circumstances of her refusal to come on, and the reason she gave, it was imperative for us to be up front about Ray's view on that part of the debate. We make no apology for that.
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