Radio National: Pauline Hanson Science in the Pub comment

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In January of this year I listened to a Science in the Pub program which I believed included Robyn Williams along with a couple of local academics. It was generally intelligent, and often amusing, until one of the panel members found it necessary to compare Pauline Hanson with a snail.

Politics aside, I found this comment to be unnecessary, and rather inappropriate for an ABC program of ostensibly serious content and intellectual leanings. Personally, I didn't find it amusing.

I subsequently wrote to Tim Ritchie (Radio National's Editor of Presentation and Production) in January to express my concern, but received no reply. I wrote again in March to Russell Balding, Acting Managing Director of the ABC, and the reply I eventually received stated the following: firstly, that Robyn Williams did not appear in any of the summer season's Science in the Pub programs, and secondly, that all concerned with the production of those programs denied all knowledge of any such comment about Ms Hanson being made. However, I am positive that this is not the case. So - can any other listener recall the incident?

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002


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