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Plane disaster censored from Nine News because of Qantas link

The Nine Network this morning censored its 5am news bulletin to avoid mentioning last night’s Air France disaster because the programme is funded by Qantas, Mumbrella can reveal.  

Nine's early morning Qantas bulletin (this image not from today)

Nine's early morning Qantas bulletin (this image not from today)

The network’s first bulletin of the day had no mention of the disappearance of the flight off the coast of Brazil, despite it being a major story in other Australian media.

Because a recording of the programme is also shown on Qantas flights throughout that day, Nine took the decision not to tell TV viewers about the disaster.

A spokesman for Nine sent a brief email to Mumbrella saying: “We never report news involving plane incidents on Qantas inflight news bulletins.”

The story came to light after The Punch’s deputy editor Tory Maguire pointed out the absence of the crash story in a Twitter message.

Requests for more detailed comment from Nine were not returned.

Update: it’s not the first time. My attention has been drawn to this transcript from the ABC’s Media Watch pointing out a similar issue over striking Qantas engineers and other mishaps last year.

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