ABC denies population bias claims by Dick Smith
Seven years after it screened his population doco, Dick Smith sings a different tune against ABC.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
The ABC has rejected claims by entrepreneur and businessman Dick Smith it is guilty of bias in ignoring his campaign to cut Australia’s immigration intake.
Smith has told Fairfax he has spent $1 million in a campaign advocating to cut immigration numbers to around 70,000 but ABC news and current affairs has deliberately ignored it.
He will now launch an advertising campaign against ABC which he suggested was “basically treasonous.”
A spokesman for the ABC said, “The claims by Mr Smith concerning ABC News are untrue and not supported by any evidence. The ABC has no position on the issue of population growth, has no ban on reporting on this subject, and has issued no decrees or any other type of instruction to staff about reporting on this issue.”
In 2010 ABC screened Dick Smith’s Population Puzzle (pictured), followed by a special Q&A, amid criticism that Smith had part-funded the doco potentially “buying” airtime on the broadcaster.
At the time Smith even told Fairfax, ”I think the ABC has been very brave and very responsible in purchasing this documentary because no commercial channel would.”
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8 Responses
The Australian Made champion who started a magazine (Australian Geographic) and had it printed in Hong Kong…
Looks like he will enter politics at 2019 election.
An anti-ABC campaign..!? Has he just announced he’s getting a gig on Sky News and a column in The Australian?
If he does go ahead with his anti-ABC advertising campaign, he’ll almost certainly get a mention on Media Watch. That’s better than nothing.
In a past life I worked as a footman in NSW Government House and there were three people whose memory was burnt into my mind.
One of them was Dick Smith, mainly because the whole time he never stopped talking about Dick Smith.
Is Dick going a bit bonkers in his old age?
Seems so. He’s forgotten he was interviewed on radio & the story covered on radio, TV, and online news back when he launched it in the middle of August.
Maybe he’d meant he was having no luck promoting the “raise income taxes & increase company tax by 50%” angle of the same campaign on Sky News, and got confused?
To be fair, it’s an important issue in all sorts of ways, and Dick Smith has put a substantial amount of his own money where his mouth is. A lot of what he’s saying challenges all kind of notions related to population growth and the economy, including our crazed commitment to economic growth at any cost – an issue that’s gaining traction around the world at the moment. It’s certainly worthy of greater investigation by the ABC (Four Corners, 7.30, whatever), with or without Smith.