Rupert Murdoch’s pay TV channel, Sky News Australia, will next week launch a dedicated new channel promising to “canvass all angles” of the Indigenous voice to parliament.
Called Sky News The Voice Debate, the rolling news channel will broadcast press conferences, government and community announcements and town hall meetings, as well as news, analysis, commentary and documentaries.
Some high-profile Sky News commentators, including prime-time hosts Andrew Bolt and Peta Credlin, are critics of the voice and are actively campaigning against it. Chris Kenny, who hosts a weeknight current affairs program on the network, is a rare supporter of the voice on the channel.
Last week, the Bolt Report was critical of Linda Burney’s speech to the National Press Club when the Indigenous Australians minister said the no campaign should not be allowed to get away with using Trump-style politics in Australia.
Bolt said: “Linda Burney. Please, please stop embarrassing yourself. Stop hoodwinking voters too, about your racist voice”.
Credlin has claimed the voice would “take away rights for every other citizen who is non-Indigenous”.
The new channel follows the launch in recent years of two other dedicated channels: the Sky News Covid-19 channel and the Sky News election channel.
Sky News The Voice Debate will be available to Sky’s subscribers as well as regional viewers of free-to-air TV with access to Sky News Regional which has been broadcasting since 2021.
The chief executive officer of Sky, Paul Whittaker, said they were committed to providing comprehensive coverage.
“As the nation is asked to decide on a change to the constitution – one of the most consequential responsibilities for Australians in decades – Sky News Australia is committed to ensuring voters are comprehensively informed,” Whittaker said.
“The new channel will deliver a dedicated news service, providing Australians with up-to-date information and rolling coverage that shares every perspective of the debate.”
Sky will also screen a documentary The Voice: Australia Decides, hosted by Sky northern Australia correspondent, Matt Cunningham, including interviews with the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and the opposition leader, Peter Dutton.
The one-hour documentary will examine the potential of a proposed law to alter the constitution by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice, Sky said.
Cunningham said the voice had become “a heated debate not only in Canberra but also among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people”.
“Advocates argue that the voice is crucial to give Indigenous Australians a say in the laws that affect them, while opponents believe it could create a separate form of government and undermine the current political system,” Cunningham said.
The objectivity of Sky News content came under question during the pandemic when the channel was banned from uploading content to YouTube for seven days after violating its medical misinformation policies by posting numerous videos which denied the existence of Covid-19 or encouraged people to use hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin.
Sky News later sought to justify misleading Covid commentary then-host Alan Jones put to air, saying it was balanced by coverage of the daily Covid press conferences.
Sky News has also been found by the Australian Communications and Media Authority this year to have played down the threat of global heating on the Great Barrier Reef.
