AND off the back of a browser in the back of a truck …
Community and Public Sector Union
ABC Staff Union
29 June 2005
Media Watch, Peter Cundall and the Code of Conduct
Media Watch covered the story of Peter Cundall’s interview by Trevor Jackson (Hobart local radio) being pulled by Cath Hurley, the Tasmanian local radio manager.
Here in Tasmania Peter is regarded as a gardening expert employed by the ABC … His closeness to the ABC made it inappropriate for him to express a personal view on the network on such a contentious issue…
— Cath Hurley statement to Media Watch
The interview was triggered by Peter’s appearance on Denton’s Enough Rope where he expressed his personal views on the building of a pulp mill in Tasmania’s Tamar Valley.
The affair reveals the utter daftness and inconsistency of ABC senior management. Isn’t the program brief of Enough Rope all about personal views? Why did management just pull the Jackson interview? Why wasn’t the Denton interview also pulped?
This is the kind of nonsense and babble that is being driven by the half baked ABC Code of Conduct.
Peter made it clear on Media Watch that he was expressing his own views as a private citizen; that these were not the ABC’s views and that he also understood that it would have been editorially improper for him to use his own program as a platform to air his personal views.
He seems to have a pretty good grasp of what should be in a Code of Conduct.
Such clear thinking should not be left to waste. Chuck out the HR team that has spent 12 months writing drivel and get Peter to knock it together in an afternoon.
(Authorised by Graeme Thomson, ABC section secretary)
Earlier,
The gagging of Peter Cundall
