Not today, Satan. Not today.
A stoic news anchor adeptly handled a devilishly haywire situation last week when a clip showing a Satanic ritual was accidentally broadcast during her segment.
It began as Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) presenter Yvonne Yong calmly informed audiences of new animal legislation during a live program on the network. “State government announced the proposed legislation today. It’s in part due to the stabbing of a police dog during an arrest in Brisbane last year,” she said.
The ticker and visuals aligned with her speech while she continued. But as she spoke the words, “New law proposes prison for hurting police animals,” a banal, muted clip of masked officials walking and talking suddenly cut to a red-tinted moment in which a cloaked figure enthusiastically says “Hail Satan” in front of an inverted cross and behind a red-clothed altar.
After a brief moment of silence, Yong continued, unfazed.
The clip was later posted to Twitter, where it went viral.
“ABC’s satanic slip-up. What was going on here?” tweeted Australian media analysis account Media Watch.
In response to one viewer’s question, “What was with the satanic ceremony,” Yong responded “that was a system error and rather unfortunate timing!”
When the viewer inquired if there was “another story you were doing about the church of Satan? Just curious why you would have a random b roll of a satanic ritual,” Yong confirmed that was indeed the case.
“We were running another story with that footage that evening,” she wrote.
The footage was not in fact of the Church of Satan, nor the separate Satanic Temple, however, but a different devil-worshipping group, the Noosa Temple of Satan, NME reported.
The Noosa Temple made the Australian news last year for arguing that Satanists should be allowed to teach religious courses in schools, and the clip was from one of their livestreams during this campaign, NME added.
“ABC’s satanic slip up goes viral with millions of views,” the Noosa Temple proudly tweeted.