Sky News admits it was 'wrong' to air interview with Blair Cottrell from United Patriots Front
Updated
After a heavy backlash from viewers, Sky News Australia says it was wrong to air an interview with far-right nationalist Blair Cottrell.
The former United Patriots Front leader was invited onto the Adam Giles Show for a studio interview and spoke with the former Northern Territory chief minister about winding back on immigration and protecting countries against "foreign ideologies".
Within hours of the interview going to air and being shared on various Sky News social media platforms, the channel removed the interview from its repeat timeslots and online platforms.
Stopping short of an apology, news director Greg Byrnes said, "It was wrong to have Blair Cottrell on Sky News Australia" and that "his views do not reflect ours".
The decision to have Cottrell on the channel was widely criticised, with Sky News political reporter Laura Jayes criticising her own channel.
She said Cottrell, a "self-confessed Hitler fan" was not the "activist" the program labelled him as — a sentiment echoed by Sky political editor David Speers.
Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane called it a "shameful low".
"We've come to not expect much from the nocturnal programming at Sky News but featuring a neo-Nazi with a history of crime and violence is a shameful low," Mr Soutphommasane tweeted.
"It also highlights how extremists are being dangerously accommodated by sections of the Australian media."
Greens MP David Shoebridge said he would boycott going on Sky News until it provided a full apology and clear commitment never to air Cottrell's views again.
Author and journalist Benjamin Law tweeting the broadcast of "an anti-Semite" was playing in airport lounges.
Cottrell said the decision was Sky News caving to "Leftist abuse".
"I suppose my ideas are so irrefutable, that the only recourse is to silence me," he tweeted.
In September last year, Cottrell was found guilty of inciting serious contempt for Muslims after he and two other far-right nationalists uploaded a video on the United Patriots Front Facebook page of a mock beheading to protest against the building of a mosque in Bendigo.
The so-called 'Bendigo Three' argued their video was an act of free speech that focused on a specific tenet of Islam.
But the magistrate disagreed, saying the video was clearly intended to create serious contempt for or ridicule of Muslims — a decision Cottrell is appealing in the High Court.
Topics: religion-and-beliefs, community-and-society, television, australia
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