SYDNEY (ABC News / Pacific Media Watch): Activist group GetUp is lodging a complaint with the consumer watchdog after commercial television networks refused to play an ad criticising Rupert Murdoch's News Corp Australia.
The ad, which shows a man scooping up dog poop with a copy of Brisbane's The Courier-Mail, was initially rejected by Channel 7 and Channel Ten, but run on the Nine Network in Brisbane last week.
Nine has had a change of heart and dumped the ad, and the activist group will lodge a complaint with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) arguing that the networks are blocking free speech.
GetUp director Sam McLean said it is unfortunate all three commercial networks have refused to air the ad, which condemns the Murdoch media organisations for bias in favour of the opposition Liberal Party in the lead-up to the federal election on Saturday.
"All three have said it's for the reason that they don't want to criticise another media organisation," he said.
"We think that's an outrageous breach of our right to freedom of speech.
‘Suppress criticism’
"This is the major TV networks cooperating together to suppress criticism of the media in an election period when Australians ought to have the freedom to express their opinions and to criticise and speak truth to power.
"The TV networks have gotten together to stop us doing that," the GetUp director told ABC News.
McLean said News Corp has been using the front page of its newspapers to run a political campaign.
"We've seen them run a political campaign into the election. Now we think that it's our responsibility and our right as citizens to speak up against that misuse of their power," he said.
GetUp said the ad already aired on the Nine Network during prime time in Brisbane last week and the network is still "holding onto" about $80,000 to pay for future ad slots.
Late this afternoon the Nine Network confirmed that GetUp would not be charged for the pre-booked slots.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
Pacific Media Watch
