Sky News host Liz Storer has declared that there’s no way the broadcaster will ever apologise for running Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots advertisements that target people who are transgender.
“We’d like to say to everyone. We’re not sorry what-so-ever.” Storer said on Wednesday night’s edition of the The Late Debate that she hosts alongside James MacPherson and Caleb Bond.
Storer said the publications which had refused to run ads from Palmer’s new political party Trumpets of Patriots were “pandering to a tiny minority”.
This week The Newcastle Herald apologised for running the new political party’s ads which proclaim there can only be two genders, and pulled the ads from the digital version of their publication.
The Age newspaper ran the ads on their front page on Wednesday, but also ran an editorial condemning the political advertising – a case potentially of having the cake and eating it too. They faced complaints from staff, and a wave of readers declaring they were cancelling subscriptions.
Sky News has been running a advertisement from party leader Suellen Wrightson that argue that children need to be protected in schools from “males dressed as females”, alongside claims about protecting women’s sports and only recognising people by the gender they were assigned at birth.
“Its always the tiny minority amongst them who says ‘No, this gives us hurty feelings’ and these guys capitulate.
“Every capitulation to the left emboldens it, which is why you must never apologise when you’re not in the wrong.” Storer said.
The presenter said broadcasters and publishers who run the advertisements from the Trumpets of Patriots are “supporting a diversity of views” and “freedom of speech”. Storer called for an apology to made to Clive Palmer and his political colleagues, arguing that their views had been unfairly quashed.
In the same segment co-host James MacPherson said the Newcastle Herald could not be trusted to be truthful in any of their reporting.
“It makes you wonder what else they’re hiding in their news reporting.” MacPherson said.
While Storer was declaring the advertisements were a sign of embracing diversity and suggested that billionaire Clive Palmer was the aggrieved party, researcher Dennis Muller from the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne had a differing point of view.
Writing in The Conversation Muller said there were several reasons political advertisements do not deserve the protection of the principle of free speech. He lists being factually wrong, attacking an attribute that people have at birth, and being calculated to arouse prejudice for political gain as concerns that should be considered.
The researcher highlights that the advertisements claims about children in schools needing protection should be a trigger for concerns.
“The fact that certain views may arouse indignation or even anger in others is not on its own a ground for suppressing them. Where unjustifiable harm is done, however, the law and ethics step in.” Muller argues.
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If you are struggling with anxiety or depression, support and counselling are available from:
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Lifeline: 13 11 14 / lifeline.org.au
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