Fascist Blair Cottrell (centre) standing in front of the Melbourne Magistrates Court
Sky News’ decision to provide an uncritical platform for violent racist and convicted criminal Blair Cottrell yesterday, and its legitimisation of him as an “activist”, not merely continues the pay TV outlet’s love affair with far-right extremists but will deeply concern Australia’s security and intelligence agencies.
ASIO’s Duncan Lewis has repeatedly warned of the growing threat of right-wing extremism in recent years. Sky News’ attempt to mainstream the criminal Cottrell — now disavowed by the channel, but only after a massive backlash on social media — will only add to concerns that the media is too eager to give a platform to voices of hatred in an effort to juice weakening ratings. In January, the Seven Network, which like Sky News has a history of pandering to bigots, gave Cottrell a platform to speak on “African gangs” and similarly tried to legitimise him as a member of a community group.
Cottrell has used social media to call for the “execution” of “leftists” and boasted of “manipulating women using violence and terror”. Sky News had invited him on to discuss immigration with former Country Liberal Northern Territory chief minister Adam Giles. Apart from Sky’s small, elderly white male audience, Cottrell’s views were broadcast into airport lounges across the country courtesy of Sky’s relationships with Qantas and Virgin.
As Crikey noted last week, Sky News has a stable of far-right commentators and presenters who seek to outdo each other in provoking outrage in order to distinguish themselves in a program line-up that is otherwise almost uniformly reactionary. Sky has a regular turnover of presenters and program line-ups, increasing the pressure on low-profile performers like Giles to up the outrage and encourage ever more extreme views. The implications for national security of this promotion of racism and, in yesterday’s case, the legitimisation of advocates of violence, will be concerning for the agencies charged with preventing extremist violence.
Why are the owners of Sky allowed to broadcast this hateful stuff.?..are we so afraid of legislation, so scared of being called a nanny State, that we’ll allow this sort of shit to pollute the minds of those at risk of influence from these nutbags?
Remove the broadcast licenses now.
Because when the Gillard comment made noises about media regulation, every single journalism outlet leaped to defend the right of News Corp, Sky etc to publish lies and propaganda without restriction.
As the mudorc did in the UK when Leveson recommended that there be some criterion like truth or accuracy.
Wouldn’t want to infringe the right the make big buck$ from pandering to the worst inclinations of the peasantry.
The increasing acceptance and projection of hard right views is now a feature of our media generally. Even so-called “left” media.
Uncritical reporting of anything coming from the right is sowing the ground for the more extremist platform of Sky and others.
It will be interesting to see Sky’s ratings once it goes onto free to air in the near future.
The bigot-promoters in government and in media like Sky and 7 should be called out for what they are: human scum. Bigotry, like gonnorrhea, is contagious, and it seems there’s a strain of it that, again like gonnorrhea, has become resistant to treatment. Some attention from political leaders to our nation’s moral hygiene is long overdue, because Australia is starting to stink.
Ponging to high heaven. A fish rots from the head. The mendacity in politics and public life is hideous. When the best we can do is put up visionaries like Trump and Hansen as being the straight talkers, telling it like it, is we are pretty much buggered.
This is the logical conclusion of allowing a corrupt, megalomanial oligarch control so much of the Australian media. This is also the logical conclusion of Australian politicians of both main parties sucking up to the same oligarch for the past few decades in order to get favourable coverage.