Struggle Street backlash: SBS pulls promo advertisement

Georgina Mitchell

A highly controversial trailer for an upcoming documentary on a blue-collar Sydney suburb has been pulled by SBS after residents and the council complained it mocked, degraded and insulted them.

The promotional video for Struggle Street, a three-part documentary to air on SBS from May 6, starts in Sydney's eastern suburbs showing pristine beaches and the harbour, then pans to the west, stopping at a Mount Druitt sign with the sound of a car crash and police sirens.

The one minute, 49 second promo includes scenes of one man farting and later standing on his porch shouting about drug dealers, a woman calling her cat a "slut", people walking through a trashed house that's covered in graffiti, and a woman smoking what appears to be marijuana.

Some of the residents featured on the SBS show Struggle Street.

Blacktown mayor Stephen Bali has called for SBS to immediately pull the series from the air so it can be viewed by the people depicted in it, and has contacted Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull to intervene. The call comes after Mr Turnbull alerted the broadcaster's managing director to comments on Twitter from then-SBS journalist Scott McIntyre. Mr McIntyre was later sacked.

"As you know the Australian government provides an overall level of funding to the SBS but has no power to direct the SBS in relation to programming decisions. Parliament has guaranteed this independence to ensure that what is broadcast is free from political interference," he said.has not seen the program so could not comment on the substance of the complaint.

"The SBS Act makes it very clear that it is the SBS board, not the Parliament or the minister, which is responsible for programming and editorial decisions."

In a petition Blacktown Council launched on change.org, Mr Bali wrote some participants in the documentary - which focuses on the lives of 10 people over six months - were never provided copies of the release forms they signed and had asked for footage to be excluded from the documentary only to see it included in the promo.

Speaking to Fairfax Media, he questioned why the public broadcaster, whose content includes news broadcast in multiple languages, would alienate an area in western Sydney that included such a high migrant population.

"This is not just an attack on Mount Druitt, it's an attack on western Sydney. We're kind of over it," he said.

"Almost 5 per cent of the population of NSW lives here... and 25 per cent were born overseas. These are the constituents that actually watch SBS, and they turned on us.

"People of Mount Druitt don't run from the fact that there are challenges to many of the residents, but we want a fair and transparent documentary rather than just saying they're doing a documentary, living in the back pockets of everybody, then just exposing the worst moments of their lives on national TV."

After meeting with the SBS head of documentaries on April 29, Mr Bali viewed the first episode with two other council members and was so disgusted by what he described as "like The Blair Witch Project but with better camera angles" that he immediately sent a letter of complaint to Mr Turnbull and SBS.

"There's only one Aboriginal person I saw portrayed in the film, and he's living in a humpy killing animals with a sling-shot and cooking birds," Mr Bali said.

"That's not a proper representation of the Aboriginal community in Mount Druitt. It's like we've stepped back 200 years in the white man's treatment of Aboriginal rights."

In a response on Friday afternoon, SBS managing director Michael Ebeid said SBS would pull the offending promo from TV as a "gesture of goodwill". However, it remained online on Saturday evening.

The series - which SBS commissioned KEO Films Australia to make - had "the intent of recognising and providing a voice to a segment of society who are living through immense hardship caused by multiple factors like unemployment, teenage pregnancy, family dysfunction, physical and mental illness, and alcohol/drug abuse", he said.

"People and families living in circumstances similar to those depicted in the documentary are located in a wide range of locations across Australia not just Mount Druitt. However for the documentary to be believable, it cannot be devoid of a place setting," Mr Ebeid said.

"SBS appreciates working with the council in this endeavour to ensure the documentary is portrayed as a story of the small section of the community struggling to get by, rather than a story of the whole community of Mount Druitt."

Mr Bali said he planned to meet with SBS early next week to further discuss the program

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/struggle-street-backlash-sbs-pulls-promo-advertisement-20150502-1myi9j.html