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Protest planned over Sunday Night report

A story over "African gangs" has triggered a community backlash.

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A protest has been planned at Seven’s Melbourne headquarters following an “African Gangs” report on Sunday Night.

The “African Gangs” report by Alex Cullen claimed “African gangs running riot, terrorising, robbing, wreaking havoc” and suggested police were loath to admit there is a problem in Victoria.

But South Sudanese community members took issue with its sensationalist approach.

Lawyer and activist Maker Mayek encouraged a #NotMyAustralia social media campaign against the programme, also writing a response for Crikey.

Lawyer Nyadol Nyuon wrote in The Age, asked, “do we want be characterised by the behaviour of the worst people in our community simply because we share the same skin tone.

“For those of us in the community, this is the difficult terrain we must navigate. How do you speak to the issue of racial vilification while giving a victim of crime the acknowledgement that what happened was sickening and completely unacceptable?

“In the end, there is no excuse for crime and no excuse for racial vilification.”

It also drew reactionary articles on Guardian, MamaMia and Junkee.

Now a protest has been planned for 4pm today at Seven’s headquarters on Harbour Esplanade. More than 1100 people have registered their interest in attending:

The media continues to vilify and demonize our community year after year, it seems that we’ve been downgraded from people into juicy headlines guaranteed to raise viewership. We understand that a minority of our community has been involved in criminal activity, we do not at all condone their actions but they are not a representation of our community as a whole. 7 has attached herself to one side of the story and refuse to give a balanced journalism, as a result of our entire community has now been forced to live in a society where all of us have been declared guilty of the crimes of a minority in the court of public opinion. We demand answers, justice, an apology and most of all, for our voices to be heard.

A Sunday Night spokesperson told TV Tonight, “Sunday Night stands by every element of the report broadcast last week. It was a fair and factual report that gave context to an ongoing and important issue in Melbourne.

“Sunday Night spent many months talking to and working with both the Victorian Police and members of the South Sudanese community in preparation of the report.

“The investigation went beyond simply reporting the experience of victims. Sunday Night set out to show the circumstances of a local South Sudanese musician who had fallen into a life of crime, and how he has now turned his life around and is producing music in the hope of steering other South Sudanese youth away from making the same mistakes.”

Source: News Corp

15 Responses

  1. Seven panicked due to the return of Australian Ninja Warrior on Nine. They thought they could beat Ninja with racism and it flopped. Here’s a bit of advice Seven. Rather than scraping the bottom of the barrel, just assign Denham Hitchcock as your health and fitness reporter and do stories about bodybuilding and fitness including the Arnold Classic which you reported on last year. I find it disgusting that with bodybuilding the major interest among young men there is nothing on TV at all which appeals to us.

  2. Didn’t see the Sunday Night report but it is clear there is a big problem with African gangs in Melbourne. Methinks this could be a case of political correctness….. One of the claims against the story was old footage but the footage would have been from real events.

  3. There was an episode of Frontline called ‘divide the community, multiply the ratings’ that featured something similar to this Ch7 effort from Sunday Night.

    1. Obviously you didn’t watch the show then, there was nothing divisive about the story! In fact they had the victim meet someone from the community and talk to him because she was now afraid of his community, rather than social justice bludgeon everyone, perhaps get informed !

  4. I understand this issue is s hot one, but the report was actually quite fair, rather than people jumping straight to protest and cries of racism, let’s all take a step back and examine the facts; there is an issue with crimes being committed by a group of African kids/gangs in Victoria. The crimes tend to be quite violent and brazen, victims are mainly innocent people going about their days/trying to make a living.

    If every group is going to protest every time facts are spoken about, and we immediately jump to name calling and talking about racism then we are on a path of no return.

    Can you imagine if during the gangland war, if there were protests and cries of racism every time a report was made about the crimes?

    Facts are, there’s a problem, many Sudanese leaders have come out in the media and said even they dont know what to do, less protests please and more trying to…

      3. Deejays, the story nor the post from Bass_A .. did not say all Africans are violent criminals.. so what is your point to this post?? please point to where the story or Bass_A said that all Africans are violent criminals!

  5. I completely understand that only a small minority of their community are involved in these crimes, and I don’t feel that Sunday Night suggested otherwise. There is good and bad in every race.

  6. Maybe if those minority was pressured by the commmunity because their actions do in fact reflect ordinarily on the wider community, maybe they would take a better path by contributing to our society and then just maybe we wouldn’t have this issue to begin with.

    These leaders need to take the lead rather than again shifting blame onto the ones lifting the lid.

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