You’ve no doubt seen one or more of the “This is our story” ads on TV, promoting the positive aspects of the country’s mining industry, from the perspective of the individual. As one might expect, the material was found to be a ripe source of humour and in need of de-spinning by a group “backed by the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union”. The group couldn’t help but put together its own take on the adverts.
Mumbrella spotted the ad, called “The Paid Extra”, a few days ago, unfortunately, major coal producer Xstrata was none to happy about the story and fired a letter at the outlet, asking it to remove the video or face legal action.
Here’s snippet from the Xstrata letter:
Xstrata recognises that there is legitimate scope for parody in public debate, and appreciates the importance in public life of a free and frank exchange of views. Nonetheless, we take exception to the piece concerning (name withheld by Mumbrella) because it makes a number of suggestions concerning (name withheld) that are unfair and defamatory.
I’m not inclined to tempt fate by embedding the clip, but I’m very confident of everyone’s mouse-clicking abilities, so I’ll just leave this here.