verging_on_random

SBS rolls in tabloid gutter

August 2, 2007 on 11:21 pm | In Uncategorized |

The SBS network’s ‘Dateline’ program on Haneef Mohamed was a disgrace. The reporter, David O’Shea, should be ashamed of himself, as should the show’s editors and producer. It was sensationalist reporting of the lowest kind, ignoring the most basic standards of fact-checking.

Midway through the program, out of the blue, O’Shea blandly tells us about ‘a document’ that has since been plastered all over the Australian media as ‘an Indian police file’ that ‘links Haneef to al Qaeda’. It is still available on the SBS website, linked to one of its headline stories on its home page.

When you watch the show, O’Shea reveals nothing whatsoever about the mysterious document. He just says that while in India, “I was handed this document and was told it was the official dossier on Haneef”. The document itself looks as if it is meant to be some kind of police form but extraordinarily, the document has none of the things you would expect to find on an official form: no name of the police service, no file number, no headers or footers. In fact, it’s a document that anyone could knock up at home, right down to the picture of Haneef which appears to be a poor copy of the photo that was used by the Australian media for weeks.

In other words the document looks a lot more like an amateurish forgery than the official form O’Shea claims it to be.

SBS recognised the obvious deficiencies in the document and George Negus interviewed O’Shea in the studio about it. O’Shea claims he was given the document by ‘a senior Bangalore police officer’ who printed it off and gave it to O’Shea while the latter was in the police officer’s office. Yet O’Shea seems not to have asked any questions about it. His pissweak comment was that he put the document in his bag before the officer asked for it back.

Why would a police officer ask O’Shea to return a document that he’d just given to him, presumably because the policeman wanted him to have it? O’Shea reckons he saw the words ‘al Qaeda’ on the document before he put it in his bag. Does he seriously expect us to believe that a reporter glimpsing such a sensational scoop would not follow it up by asking more questions? Instead, he would have us believe that he put the document in his bag and didn’t make any attempt to get more information about it. Well if that’s true, SBS should get rid of him and engage a more competent reporter.

In the Negus interview, O’Shea speculates about what the document means. He never mentions any attempts he made to clarify or get more details. Moreover, anyone who thinks Haneef’s body language in his 60 Minutes interview suggested that he was not being completely frank should have a look at O’Shea’s performance.

The show was a mildly informative insight into the Haneef affair from his wife’s perspective. The startling ‘dossier’ interrupted the flow of the story; it came out of nowhere and led nowhere. It had all the hallmarks of a late insertion added to provide a sensationalist element and give SBS some cheap ratings. It discredits everyone associated with it.

I ceased to support public funding for ABC television quite a while ago. The sooner they sell the bloody thing the better. As far as I’m concerned they can put SBS on eBay at the same time.