Kerri Anne this morning
Last night at about 8:30 PM I received a phone call from a young producer at the Kerri-Anne show asking if I would like to go on the program this morning.
I explained that I was in Northern NSW and that he'd left it a little bit late to arrange anything down in Sydney but he said we could do a phone interview so the travel wouldn't matter.
I then asked for all of the details of the show and this is what I was told:
1- It would last for about 4 minutes.
2- It was going to be a vaccination debate between myself and Dr Penny, the doctor who appears regularly on Kerri-Anne's show
I said that since this was such a complex issue, I wouldn't really care to go on a show where two people are supposed to debate for only 4 minutes since that would be too superficial and not do the subject any credit.
The producer said he would check and call me back.
When he did, he provided me with a list of questions that I considered to be very good and said that they had agreed for the segment to last 6 minutes and that it might last even longer.
I therefore agreed to participating and for those of you who saw the program (for others, I do think this gets archived to the youtube website but am not sure. If anyone knows and can forward a link to me, that would be great. Please email it to meryl@avn.org.au) you would see that though it was far from balanced (how many times did Kerri-Anne interrupt me? I seem to have lost count) and the questions that were asked were completely different to the ones I had been told would be given.
Not only were the questions completely different, but Kerri-Anne asked me twice why we were anti-vaccine - one time after another. I had to wonder if she had been listening to what I said or if she had been instructed to try and get me to say that we were anti-vaccine when we consistently say we are not?
Anyway, at the end of the talk, Kerri-Anne said that they were very interested in doing more on this subject and hearing from people who have an opinion about this issue so let's take them at their word.
Please write to her at kerrianne@nine.com.au.
Make sure you include the following in your email:
1- Were you ever helped by the AVN
2- Did you make an informed decision when it came to vaccinating your own children
3- Do you think the media does a fair job in reporting on this subject
4- Do you know of anyone who is vaccine injured
5- Do you know of anyone who was injured by a disease - were they vaccinated against that disease.
I would really appreciate it if you could cc me on that email - meryl@avn.org.au.
Let's get going and get our message out the only way we can - through grass-roots activism.
I know I've asked you to write lots of letters this last week, but this is such a vital issue - feel free to 'recycle' the letters you've already used, OK?