Lets rewind here for a bit and track down exactly what the hell has happened. Last September, during its election coverage, the team from The Chaser broadcast a skit on their program The Hamster Decides that depicted NewsCorp affiliated journalist Chris Kenny fucking a dog. The photo was crudely doctored and was on screen for roughly 4 seconds in total. The skit was aired in response to Kenny’s attacking of the ABC, suggesting that the (then newly elected) Abbott Government aught to consider cutting funding to the public broadcaster. Chris Kenny was none too pleased with this depiction and demanded launched litigation against the network, and requested an immediate apology. The ABC, for its part, reviewed the sketch and deemed it to be a little unsavoury, but not in breach of their standards for satire. The Supreme Court subsequently gave the go ahead for Kenny to sue the ABC for defamation, but rejected Kenny’s claims that the clearly photoshopped image gave anyone the impression that Kenny really fucks dogs, which Kenny appealed against, presumably to stem the flow of bestiality-related targeted ads that now keep popping up on his Facebook feed.
At the time of broadcast, I described the skit as tasteless and undergraduate, but noted that it raised questions about the nature of satire and the boundaries of free speech afforded to satirists, comedians and cartoonists.” “Having reviewed the issue, in my opinion it falls short of the quality demanded by our audience and normally delivered by our programming. While Mr Kenny is a strong and persistent critic of the ABC, and can expect to be a subject of satire, the depiction of him was very strong in the context of the satirical point attempted.”
