Saturday, February 12, 2011

What's With SBS?

Under the heading Mubarak defiant as ever, last night's 6.30 SBS World News led with an extract from the tyrant's I'm not going anywhere speech, followed by scenes of the even more defiant masses in Tahrir Square screaming back, in so many words, Oh, yes, you are!

And then, as reporter Kathy Novak was saying, "Not everyone reacted that angrily," we were suddenly in a room with what looked to be a handful of Mubarak's thugs (no names, no pack drill!), one of whom offloaded this little gem:

"The speech was excellent. He handed authority to Omar Suleiman, but he is still there. Thank God he is still with us while we get over this crisis. It's not good for a captain to leave his ship. A good captain is the last to leave a sinking ship."

"But that view," intoned Novak in a triumph of understatement, "is in the minority..."

Now, as if the airing of a gratuitous tribute to Mubarak were not enough, SBS actually managed to top it with a follow-up piece, World watching Cairo, narrated by Sergei Pianella.

After some footage of Obama and the usual robotic droning from Gillard, Pianella cuts to footage of Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak, currently in Washington making moan. Pianella comments, "Israel has more at stake in the outcome than most. But even so, defence minister Ehud Barak wasn't prepared to give his view on the latest events." An off-camera voice then asks Barak, "Would you be happy to see [Mubarak] stay for a little bit longer than have him stand down right away?" To which he answers coyly, "No, I would not respond on what happened in Egypt."

So far so good, but then on comes a concluding black and white shot of the Ayatollah Khomeini, as Pianella concludes, "Like the French president, he probably hopes that Egypt would not end up with what the French president, Nicholas Sarkozy, calls an Iran-style religious dictatorship."

For SBS, it seems that the voice of the Egyptian people is neither here nor there. All that matters is what an Israeli politician has to say - and even when he's lost for words, SBS will supply the requisite Zionist talking point for him.

3 comments:

brian said...

SBS has long been zionist central...that waas madef plain by the 'reporting' on the Zionist attack on the Mavi Marmara

Now that Mubarak has fallen it will be interesting to see how SBS reports it.

Anonymous said...

Excellent Merc. I have noticed this bias on SBS for some time - so much so that I have stopped watching it - but have never understood the reasoning (or people) behind it. Can you shed any light on this?

MERC said...

You'd have to be a fly on the wall of News and WW 2 Affairs (current affairs is a misnomer these days)at SBS to know the details. Suffice it to say that both public broadcasters appear to have been nobbled by the usual suspects. The Australian public must be kept in the dark at all costs.