Channels Seven and Nine (Australia) think deaf people should drown.

[sami]

Recently, Australia has been hit by some severe natural disasters; in particular, Queensland was hit first by flooding, and then by the worst cyclone since at least the '70s. Cyclone Yasi was, in terms of the raw power of the storm, a more severe storm than Hurricane Katrina.

Accordingly, there were a lot of evacuations and preparations to try and minimise the death toll. The Queensland Premier was frequently on television giving updates to vital information about evacuation centres, risk levels, safety warning, etc.

In order to disseminate information effectively, she appeared with a sign language interpreter at her side.

However, as documented by Media Watch, our major networks decided that it would be more important to show more footage of the floods and storm, or just to zoom in for a tight closeup of Anna Bligh, cutting the interpreter out of the shot.

Channel 7's excuse? "For technical reasons we were unable to show you the person signing that media conference and we do apologise for that."

Stupid and craven.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

An unsurprised BOOOOOO! to Channels 7 and 9, but good on Anna Bligh for taking an interpreter - they were really determined to get everyone to safety, and it seems to have worked. I also appreciated the warnings that reminded people to check on neighbours who were recent immigrants, elderly, disabled or non-English speakers.

[sami]

Yeah, it made me sort of proud of my country to see the shots of the evac centres, where the prevailing mood of the evacuees appeared to be "boredom".

Although obviously this means we don't get to make snarky comments about Queenslanders for the foreseeable future, on the bright side that dude bitching about how people from Sydney should be exempt from paying for government rescue efforts because it's more expensive to live there reinforces our prejudices about Sydney, so we have them to mock.