Australia: Must not joke about skin color

Channel Nine’s Today show presenters have been criticised for joking about being “too white” for a Gold Logie nomination after Lee Lin Chin and Waleed Aly were recognised by the television awards for the first time.

Announcing the nominations for the Gold Logie Today’s Karl Stefanovic made fun of Chin’s first-time nomination and remarked to fellow Nine presenter Ben Fordham that he wasn’t really white himself.

Fordham said: “Because this whole idea in the past that it’s been all white, last time I checked, Stefanovic ... where is that from? What part of the world is that from?”  “It’s from the eastern bloc,” Stefanovic said on Monday’s show.

“Correct, so you’ve been trailblazing long before Waleed and Lee Lin Chin,” Fordham said.  “I might look white on the outside but I’m dark on the inside,” Stefanovic said.

Fordham questioned why Lisa Wilkinson – who was sitting at another desk in the studio – hadn’t received a nomination given her many accomplishments in the media industry.

“Lisa’s too white,” Stefanovic said.

“I got a spray tan and everything and still didn’t make it,” Wilkinson replied.

The exchange was labelled racist by some people on Twitter.  The artistic director of the Melbourne writers’ festival, Lisa Dempster, tweeted: “Disgusted by Karl Stefanovic & Lisa Wilkinson’s comments about the #Logies. Not ok, guys.”

The Indigenous SBS broadcaster Michelle Lovegrove wondered: “So skin colour determines a Logie nomination?”

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