Qantas Bans Hanson From Inflight News
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday June 24, 1998
Qantas has pressured Mr Kerry Packer's Nine Network to censor news stories about Ms Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party in the inflight news bulletin the network provides for the international airline.
Head of public affairs for Qantas, Mr Bernard Shirley, confirmed yesterday that a staff member of the airline's inflight entertainment office, Ms Susie McGlinn, had written to Channel 9's program manager, Mr Michael Healy, last Friday asking the network to eliminate any reference to Ms Hanson and One Nation in the bulletins.
Mr Shirley said the letter was written after a Qantas staffer returning to Australia from overseas complained about inflight news items he found "unacceptable".
Mr Shirley did not name the staffer, but other sources familiar with the incident said they believed it was a Qantas manager returning from Indonesia who felt news items about Ms Hanson were offensive to Indonesian passengers on the flight.
Mr Healy passed the written request on to Nine's news director, Mr Paul Fenn, who sent a strongly worded response to Qantas on Monday saying that if the ban on Ms Hanson were implemented, it would make it impossible for the network to provide any stories on Federal politics or the coming Federal election.
"I said with an election campaign coming up, we wouldn't be able to mention [Prime Minister] John Howard or [Opposition Leader] Kim Beazley or [National Party Leader] Tim Fischer, which makes it a little bit tough," Mr Fenn said.
His letter drew a quick response from Qantas's Mr Shirley, who wrote back yesterday to "clarify" what he described as "what seems to have been an overzealous internal interpretation of a request to delete any racially offensive material from the news Channel 9 prepares for Qantas".
"In the interests of providing a worthwhile news service, Qantas does not want you to exclude any valid political stories from the bulletins. However, we specifically do not want you to include reports which contain material that is offensive to any particular ethnic group.
"You will appreciate that in providing services to people from throughout the world, we try to ensure that we do not offend them through insensitivities in our inflight video programs."
While Mr Fenn was happy to accept Mr Shirley's clarification of the situation yesterday, Ms Hanson was angry about the incident.
Her adviser, Mr David Oldfield, said it was "disgraceful, un-Australian activity asking Channel 9 to be political censors on behalf of Qantas".
"Everything that is said publicly, people should have the right to judge for themselves whether something matters or doesn't," he said.
"But it certainly isn't up to any airline or anyone else to decide that legitimate public debate isn't to be viewed."
It is common for television networks, like Nine, to delete stories from their inflight news packages which the airlines do not wish to show to their passengers, such as footage of air crashes.
Some airlines also ask that news items involving rival airlines be deleted.
It is most unusual, however - in Australia at least - for a news network to be asked to make specific changes to political news stories.
© 1998 Sydney Morning Herald
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