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Reality TV - SBS style

By Branko Miletic - posted Tuesday, 8 May 2007


But the Vietnamese community is just one of many to have a bone to pick with SBS. According to a number of Jewish groups, in its reporting of the Middle East conflict, SBS has rarely ever adhered to its own Charter.

In a 2003 article “Imbalance all the time: How SBS violates its Code of Practice”, by Daniel Mandel writing in the online journal, The Review, he says that “Palestinian violence against Israel is ‘claimed’ or ‘alleged’, while Israeli violence against Palestinians is almost always reported as actual and undisputed. Moreover, SBS World News has repeatedly made the main subject of its stories Israeli retaliatory action against Palestinian attacks, not the Palestinian attacks that preceded Israeli actions, the latter often reported as something Israel ‘claimed’ had prompted its actions.”

Mandel further notes that “Most serious, however, is the frequency of outright factual error, such as the 15 recorded cases from 2001, none of which when pointed out to SBS ever produced a retraction or an-air clarification.”

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And more worrying according to Mandel is the fact that, “When criticised with respect to programming, SBS contends that under its Charter, individual documentaries do not need to be balanced or offer a right of reply to allegations, providing balance and the ‘widest range of opinion’ is provided ‘over time’ as per Article 2.4.1 of the SBS Code of Practice”.

Furthermore, this story becomes even more serious than just one-sided documentaries when we are talking about the Balkans according to Sasha Uzunov. “In 1987 popular SBS TV reporter Vladimir Lusic was removed from the current affairs program Vox Populi under mysterious circumstances. Lusic, who now lives in his native Croatia, told me a few years ago he was concerned about political interference at SBS from the then Communist Yugoslav government which prompted SBS for his removal and got its wish”, says Uzunov.

Perhaps it is a sign of the latent racism in our political elite that any slight or even perceived bias in ABC news reporting is reason enough to have dozens of politicians and their media minders chasing ghosts at the ABC and yet the very real possibility of SBS news and recruitment policies being influenced by foreign governments is not worthy of even a miniscule amount of attention.

Sadly the interference of SBS news by outside forces was hardly anything new. A year earlier, on February 28, 1986, the Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme was assassinated by person or persons unknown to this day. Yet the following night, SBS newsreader Mary Kostakidis in the nightly World News bulletin reported “Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme has been assassinated, apparently by Croatian extremists …”

This was a strange, and on the surface surreal, statement. Not only was SBS the only media outlet in the world to make this outlandish claim, but the only other body to air this absurd accusation happened to be Tanjug, the official Yugoslav government-run news agency. The claim, which was refuted by the Swedish government left many people wondering perhaps this was a technical error by the newsreader. Unfortunately, technical problems were not the reason behind the statement by Kostakidis.

There are several issues to consider here, not least of which is how, in an age predating the Internet and other information superhighway gadgetry, did SBS World News and the Yugoslav government manage to simultaneously sing from the same hymn sheet?

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Some could say this was a coincidence, but considering the statement was only a few hours after the murder of Prime Minister Palme and looking at the past behaviour of the broadcaster, the only logical answer is that there must have been some form of editorial co-operation at play here, a scenario as scary as it is disgusting. Over the years SBS has continually refused to comment on this issue - some would say that their silence could easily be taken as an admission of guilt.

As a publicly-funded body, SBS should not have the right to become the silent partner of any overseas government - whether benign or otherwise. As a media body that claims to be upholding high journalistic values, it has no place in allowing any outside group influencing its editorial policy. And as an organisation that claims to uphold the values and tenets of multiculturalism, it should have no involvement in playing one ethnic group off against another.

Sadly this logic seems to be an anathema to SBS and its management and whenever it is confronted with the evidence, SBS simply retreats behind a wall of public service double-speak.

Over the past 27 years, SBS has managed to involve itself in the unsavoury politics of Old World antagonisms by taking sides in historical grievances it neither understands nor cares about - and in the current social climate in this country, this is truly a dance with the devil. Looking at recent civil disturbances such as the Cronulla race riots, this is a dirty and potentially even dangerous game played by a public organisation that seems answerable to no one - not even itself.

Perhaps the time truly has come to hold some form of inquiry into SBS- maybe then the truth of its shenanigans will fully surface and a reform of this organisation can finally begin.

As Daniel Mandel says, “It’s time SBS provided some answers - and remedies - namely, an independent complaints procedure”.

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About the Author

Branko Miletic has been a professional journalist for the past 11 years, working for a number of publications both in Australia and overseas. He specialises in a range of subjects including security, current affairs and technology.

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