disgraceful censorship on live debate
from AntBlog701

disgraceful censorship on live debate

I don't usually talk about politics, since I am not that interested in politics. Last night was the only agreed television (so far) debate agreed by Prime Minister John Howard. What John Howard (Liberal Party) or Kevin Rudd (Labor Party) said are not that important, but the live broadcast on Channel 9's 60 Minutes was cut, by The National Press Club, actually from the Liberal Party.

Nine Network's feed dropped out, forcing it to switch to showing the Sky News feed with the worm superimposed.

"The National Press Club was controlling the broadcast but clearly the sabotaging instructions came from the Liberal Party," Ray Martin told the Nine Network this morning.

(...)

"There was some fairly angry phone calls going back and forth from the National Press Club to our producer and we got wind that they were about to cut it after 25 minutes ... so we switched to our back-up service and then they cut that as well, so we then had to go with Sky for the last hour," he said.

The worm clearly does not look good for the Honourable Prime Minister Mr John Howard.

The verdict from reaction of 90 swinging voters in Channel 9's Sydney studios favoured opposition leader Kevin Rudd with 65 percent, and 29 percent to Howard. This morning, Sunrise's phone poll showed that John Howard (55%) won the debate to Kevin Rudd (45%).

Ray Martin summed up the situation,
“Obviously the worm offended someone. So much for free speech in Australia.”

Censoring live debate simply because the worm is not in favour of the prime minister is simply disgraceful.

News source: Liberal Party cut worm: Ray Martin (News.com.au, 22 Oct 2007)