Noreen Navin, Sydney
On March 31, the management of community television station TVS Sydney instructed the producers of the half-hour Sunday night Actively Radical TV program that they were not to screen a 10-minute segment from ARTV's documentary Coca-Cola Kills.
Produced by ARTV in conjunction with the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, Coca-Cola Kills documents the Australian campaign against Coca-Cola's activities in Colombia. Using footage of a protest organised at the Opera House last year by the Colombian Solidarity Committee in Australia and a series of "vox pops" on Coca-Cola, the film exposes the corporation's treatment of its workers in Colombia. The film also details the targeting for assassination by right-wing death squads of trade unionists in that country.
TVS Sydney management told the ARTV program producers that the 10-minute segment from Coca-Cola Kills was not to be aired because it could open the station up to a defamation suit. The program's producers sought to cooperate with management, and rushed a new edit of the ARTV program to TVS Sydney's Penrith studios, replacing the Coca-Cola Kills segment with another segment to be aired with the rest of the original program.
ARTV then contacted its lawyers, who have informed ARTV that under section nine of the Defamation Act 2005 (NSW) "certain corporations do not have cause of action for defamation". More legal advice was sought by ARTV, which was informed that protection against corporate defamation in NSW has been enforced since 2003 as a result of the defamation law.
Acting on this legal advice, ARTV has informed TVS Sydney that there is no risk of Coca-Cola launching legal proceedings against the station or against ARTV for screening the original segment of the ARTV program on Coca-Cola.
Actively Radical TV screens on Channel 31 every Sunday at 10:30pm, and is repeated on Thursdays at 3am and Fridays at 2.30pm. For more information about ARTV, visit .
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, April 5, 2006.
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