Interesting article in today's Age that demonstrates the perils of live radio interviews and begs some questions about censorship levels within our national broadcaster the ABC:
"(During an interview with Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone, ABC Journo Tony Eastley was) attempting to establish how the seriously injured Ms Alvarez Solon, an Australian citizen, came to be (wrongly) deported to the Philippines, Eastley came out with the throwaway line that Government officials dropped her off in the country - perhaps from a moving car.
Senator Vanstone took umbrage, saying his comments were "extraordinary" and "indicative of an attitude" at the ABC.
ABC acting head of national programs Greg Wilesmith swiftly removed the interview's controversial parts from the transcript and audio links on AM's website.
"In the course of the interview and in the course of a question, Tony had made an error," he told The Age.
"It seemed to us best to remove the error rather than allow the inaccuracy to stand."
Quite extraordinary really. The journo made a slip, so they decided to remove it from the record. This is not like an edited newspaper, it is supposed to be a transcript of the interview.
And I can't help but wonder why it was necessary to completely remove the original comment rather than just putting a note at the end of the transcript acknowledging, and correcting the slip of the tongue? After all, when politicians make mistakes during radio or TV interviews they're not afforded a similar opportunity to rewrite history – in fact, the words of politicians are regurgitated over and over again with much gusto.
Sure any media organisation with a commitment to the truth would work hard to correct it's errors – but that's a fair way from erasing the transcript of a live radio comment from the record. And by completely erasing the comments from the transcript, the ABC has opened itself even further to its many critics in the government and elsewhere who point to its leftist bias on every available opportunity.
Comments