Reality TV - SBS style

From its inception in 1980, the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) has never been far from controversy. Its very creation caused a stir within the mainstream press that considered it an unwelcome intruder into an already crowded media market. But unbeknown to many outside the murky world of ethnic politics, SBS was also causing imbalances in many other areas and from virtually the first day of its transmission, the multicultural broadcaster was locked in a dark game of undermining some of the very people it was created to represent.

The Fraser Government stacked the SBS board with its own appointees and those it considered to be “well-known ethnic personalities”. In other words, Greeks, Italians, so-called “Yugoslavs” and a tiny smattering of Asians, most of whom came from the various ethnic radio stations and had little or no training in television media, nor for that matter much understanding of the concept of a free and fair press. In fact some of these individuals were also working as operatives for a number of overseas intelligence services, a fact not lost on ASIO or the Australian Federal Police (AFP) at the time.

As such, SBS was and remains to this day a public service body whose rose-coloured views of the outside world are rarely tempered by reality and which permits no external criticism for fear of upsetting the apple cart. Much like the old Australian Soccer Federation, from the start SBS was beholden to an internal clan-like system relying on a Byzantine management structure and institutionalised cronyism.

However the main guilt of SBS is its perversion of its role as a media and news provider by aligning itself with foreign governments, many of which had human rights records that were simply appalling, which in turn has helped propagate various political and historical hatreds that have no place in 21st century multicultural Australia.

Melbourne freelance journalist Sasha Uzunov writing recently in the Crikey online newsletter said, “In 26 years there has not been one reporter or presenter from Australia's sizeable Turkish and Macedonian communities. This is a remarkable statistic. Members of the Turkish and Macedonian communities claim that SBS TV marginalises them because the broadcaster fears the influence of the powerful and politically-savvy Greek lobby. All of these ethnic groups do not get along because of historic tensions that have no place in peaceful Australia. SBS by playing favourites rather than showing toughness is in fact keeping these tensions alive.”

In 2003, SBS began broadcasting Vietnamese news direct from Hanoi. This angered and upset many in the Vietnamese community who fled the Communist regime for a freer life in Australia. The last thing they wanted was the voice of Hanoi, courtesy of the Australian taxpayer beamed into their living rooms.

Despite huge protests in front of SBS offices in Melbourne and Sydney, the management of SBS remained unmoved. In fact, in a sign of its arrogance, SBS management told the protestors to take their complaints to a “community advisory committee”.

But according to a report from the time by the ABC’s Lateline program, quoting Shaun Brown, Head of SBS TV, “They did ask that the program be suspended until the community advisory committee had met. And we didn't agree to that, I mean it is there according to policy and that's what we are operating on.”

Brown went on to claim that “What's difficult for us to judge is whether or not that's a majority view, a mass majority view. It's hard to work that out because we do get a number of people calling in every day: "We love the service, thank you for giving it to us."

The whole issue even achieved mainstream prominence and the Vietnamese community managed to attract supporters such as high-profile and conservative columnists and broadcasters like Alan Jones, Gerard Henderson, Andrew Bolt and Greg Sheridan.

However, this is just one example how SBS has managed to corrupt the very soul of Australian journalism. By forming quixotic alliances with some of the world’s most oppressive regimes, a media organisation which was supposed to promote multiculturalism has managed to do almost everything in its power to bury it. In its warped and twisted view of the world, running the official news service from the Communist government of Vietnam is somehow promoting multiculturalism within Australia.

Recently SBS has gone down the very same path with the Chinese news, which is basically the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, and again, it sees nothing wrong with this policy.

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.”

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?

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”.