When does journalism become propaganda? That was the question being asked in the SBS newsroom last week when the network scored an exclusive interview with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. Airing on Friday, the night before the election, reporter Luke Waters’ interview was hard won. He spent two years pursuing what he now describes as a “bizarre experience”.
“Once inside, I meet with the senior press office staff responsible for arranging the interview,” Waters says. “After Arabic coffee and small talk, logistics for the next day’s interview are discussed. It’s made clear that the interview must not be edited in any fashion. The department head, a former news anchor herself, explains that hard questions are welcome but rudeness and interruptions are not.”
SBS agreed to a pre-interview discussion with officials, to broadcast the 25-minute interview in full and to use the footage shot by four of the regime’s own cameras inside the presidential palace in Damascus. Some SBS journalists told Beast they believe too many restrictions were placed on the network. A spokesman for SBS denies the questions were approved beforehand but says “we provided the topic areas for questions” and confirms all the editing was done by the regime.
“The Syrian technical team compiled the interview with SBS’s Luke Waters present,” a spokesman told Beast. “SBS confirms that the cut was the full interview and that no questions or answers were edited out.”
Perhaps the best test of how beneficial the exercise was for Assad – who was labelled a “murderous tyrant” by the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull – is to see how the regime reported the interview in its state-run media. The official Syrian media said:
President Bashar al-Assad said the contradiction seen between the Australian officials’ statements and the official Australian stance towards Syria is an expression of the double standards followed by the West in general.
“They attack us politically, and then they send their officials to deal with us under the table, especially their security officials – including their government,” added the president in an interview with the Australian SBS TV channel due to be aired on Friday.
“All of them do that as they don’t want to upset the US … In fact, most of the western officials only repeat what the US wants them to say.”
The full interview will be posted on the Syrian Presidency’s official Facebook page at 12: 30pm on Friday (Damascus time) at the same time the interview will be aired on the Australian TV channel (Canberra time).
Allergic to Nutt?
ABC news aired a most unfortunate subtitle on Wednesday night, accidentally labelling Tony Nutt the Liberal party’s “dictator” instead of director. Was it because Nutt had been described in several reports in recent days as one?
“Tony Nutt, the head of the Coalition’s re-election campaign, has been accused of blowing the government’s poll chances by running an eight-week ‘dictatorship’,” according to news.com.au.
Or was it because the billionaire retailer Gerry Harvey lamented that Australia was ungovernable and should bring in a dictator? The ABC apologised for the slip at the end of the bulletin.
@ABCNewsBrisbane Apparently Liberal Party have a Federal Dictator! @tony_nutt pic.twitter.com/VjDKWzkfAh
— Steven Cooper (@scooperoz) July 6, 2016
Final curtain after Drum battle
The former ABC managing director Mark Scott set up the opinion website The Drum back in 2009 and it was funded largely by a discretionary fund from the MD’s own office. But when that money ran out and the news division had to pick up the tab, the end was nigh, insiders say. There has always been a division between those who believe the ABC shouldn’t be in the opinion space and those who thought the broadcaster should provide a forum for debate. The ABC’s news director, Gaven Morris, was in the first camp and, when he had to tighten his purse strings, The Drum was a casualty.
Crocodile: done deed
The NT News recently updated its team of news reporters and among the prosaic rounds of education reporter, civic reporter, health reporter and court reporter was a unique round. Is the NT News the only paper in the world to have a “croc and UFO reporter?” Jill Poulsen is the lucky journalist to have landed this sensational round.
CONGRATULATIONS @jill_poulsen FOR BEING NAMED THE NT NEWS' FIRST EVER CROC/UFO REPORTER. DON'T FARK IT UP. THE WORLD IS WATCHING.
— The NT News (@TheNTNews) July 4, 2016
Media milks Hanson’s return
The post-election silly season is providing some excellent fodder for reporters. We particularly like the one about Pauline Hanson and Coles’ cheap milk. According to the Daily Mail, Hanson was caught out topping up her cuppa with a bottle of $2 milk. This was a story because in May she said: “I would pay another 50c a litre for my milk if it went straight to the dairy farmers.”
Hanson’s spokesman, James Ashby, told Channel Nine the milk did not come from Coles. Hanson responded on Facebook on Thursday with a photo of non-Coles milk.
“It must be a slow news morning for some outlets. I woke up this morning to find claims I support Coles milk. I thought those people without lives might like to see what’s in the fridge today.”
