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Q & A apologises for tweet

Q & A has apologised to Liberal MP Christopher Pyne for a tweet that said: "Does Pyne light up when he's talking about men in uniform?"

ABC1’s Q & A has come under fire for running a tweet during the show that said: “Just me or does (Christopher) Pyne light up when he’s talking about men in uniform?”

The tweet followed a discussion on the Libyan crisis and possible military involvement, in a forum with Liberal MP Christopher Pyn as a guest.

ABC has since apologised to Pyne.

Q & A has a complex moderation process that deals with over 19,000 tweets during the course of the live program,” a spokesperson said.

“This tweet was one that unfortunately went to air and shouldn’t have. On review, the program agreed it was inappropriate and has contacted Christopher Pyne’s office to apologise if any offence was caused.”

The tweet aired on Monday night in an episode which also discussed gay marriage, including a video question from comedian Josh Thomas.

The oft-applauded Q & A has come in for its share of criticism lately, including that it pursued Wikileaks Julian Assange for a video question to Prime Minister Julia Gillard. In 2010 a tweet during an interview with former PM John Howard  joked about throwing a shoe at him -just moments before an audience member tossed the real thing.

ABC has rejected a suggestion the tweet about Pyne was in any way homophobic.

25 Responses

  1. The tweets are better than the show except the Q&A tweet moderator publishes the inane ones.

    After all, all the good questions ever asked on Q&A are taken as a comment. What a waste of production.

    The idea is good, the implementation poor.

  2. I think the tweets have had their day. They are annoying and trifle over important subjects. It was only a matter of time that controversial ones caused issues.
    Lucky, due to the time this airs I watch it in bed and my tv there is not widescreen and cuts the tweets off & makes them easy to ignore.

  3. @Anthony Mai

    Homosexuality is being used as the punchline. Inferring someone may be gay supposedly elicited snigger’s- this is never the case for heterosexuality.

  4. @Ann And as long as you know there the panel always features a couple of ignorant bigots and the Young Liberals make sure they are always present in the audience.

  5. They should get rid of the tweets. There’s no point in having one liners that can’t be debated, and they seem to always seem to be one-sided anyway to push a particular agenda or sway public opinion.

  6. i enjoy watching the show while reading tweets on my phone but I don’t think they need them on screen. If we’re interested we can read them ourselves. The best ones are never used anyway.

  7. Oh dear! Looks like ABC have made a few fumbles relating to Pyne; remembering that he was about to get lawyers involved over Marieke Hardy’s Drum article last year.

    Rick, could you please quote one Tweet that ever ‘enhanced’ Q&A? It’s nearly impossible to contribute in any meaningful way to debates when you must stay within 140 characters. The only worthwhile Tweets are the funny ones (which this one wasn’t), otherwise they’re just, ‘… yeah, Julia, we didn’t vote for your carbon tax,’ or, ‘we don’t want Libya to turn into another Iraq.’ How are standard comments like that enhancing the debates on Q&A?

    Just keep them funny or get rid of the whole thing.

  8. Not that i like Pyne at all, but i think if they are going to keep the tweets they should monitor what goes on the screen a bit better. Some of them are quite stupid and in my opinion lower the image of the show.

  9. Keep the Tweet – if you don’t like it, you’re in for a shock – it’s just the first rough draft of what’s around the corner, so all you baby boomer producers had better wake up.

  10. I think the tweets should stay, but they’ve changed from enhancing the show to finding funny things to tweet. ABC’s moderation need to switch to looking for insightful comments on the current topic rather than pithy, witty or potentially offensive tweets. I figured @abcnewsintern had taken over the moderation 😉

    Also, in this case, “ABC has rejected a suggestion the tweet about Pyne was in any way homophobic” .. Should I assume that the ABC contacted @missdymaxion (who has since closed her twitter account) to check on the intent?

  11. The live tweets really do distract from the usual high quality of this show.

    Do we really need sarcastic tweets running along the screen while the PM Is answering questions? No, we don’t.

    Yes, the twitter following is huge, but it needs to stay online and away from the broadcast.

  12. get rid of the stupid tweet crap, it is a nuisance and most of the comments are silly ones with no real meaning. how interested in the show can these people be if there spending time twitting.

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