Channel Nine News in Melbourne announced breaking news during the Queen's visit. This was broadcast from the Melbourne studios of Channel 9 on the evening news on 29 June 2010...
- "Meanwhile the Queen has commenced a nine day tour of Canada. She arrived in Halifax to an official welcome from Prime Minister Stephen Harper and hundreds of locals who'd gathered for hours in steady rain. Although Canada is now a republic, Queen Elizabeth's silhouette still marks their coins."
The journalists at Nine should not be criticised too much. The Leader of the Australian Democrats asked, when she launched a book at Sydney's Mitchell Library during the 1999 referendum campaign, "Why shouldn't Australia become a republic. After all Canada is."
Evidently you could have heard a pin drop.
2 comments:
Any misperception of Canada was I believe used by many supporters of the Australian Republican movement prior to the referendum on that issue as a rationale for Australia to follow and so may have become an urban myth!? I believe this included such luminaries as then Senator Natasha!?
Disclaimer: Kitchenslut voted for a republic in the referendum despite obvious concerns on the detailed structure of the proposal.
I saw the Nine report go to air and immediately did a double take. I rang Channel Nine to advise them that, in fact, Canada is a Constitutional Monarchy within the Commonwealth, something their journalist would have found if he'd done his job and checked his facts.
In response I received a grunt and a begrudging, 'I'll pass that on'. It was as if I were calling to say that the Queen was not in Nine's 'Canadian Republic' but was actually on a sleigh, flying through the night sky, over my house and away.
As far as I am aware Nine have not publicly corrected or retracted their glaringly erroneous statement, a piece of irresponsible misinformation which serves the Australian Republican movement only too well.
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