My
response to the report, ‘Village of Tears’, aired on Dateline, on SBS, 1/10/13.
Watch
‘Village of Tears’ here:
Dateline: Marching to
the beat of Scott Morrison
Dateline’s report, ‘Village
of Tears’ certainly made a lot of ignorant Australians rowdy[1].
In the report, lasting less than 7 minutes, we are told the story of the Khoder
family from Lebanon, the victims of a recent asylum seeker tragedy[2]. Hussein Khoder survived, but his wife
and eight children died when the boat they were on sank, in an attempt to reach
Australia. The report focuses on
two major narratives; the tragedy for the family, through a discussion with
Hussein’s family in Lebanon; and the anger their hometown feels toward
Australia, amid claims that Australian authorities ignored distress calls from
the asylum seeker boat. Through an
examination of the narrow and misleading representations used in the Dateline report, I argue that the viewer
is encouraged to perpetuate negative stereotypes of asylum seekers.
Dateline makes use of reliable
voices, a sympathetic sounding narrator and the victims’ family in Lebanon, to
have the viewer believe that the Khoders attempted to reach Australia for
economic reasons. Khoder’s
brother, Nasser, directly states that the Khoder family were fleeing poverty in
Lebanon. According to Article 1 of the Refugee Convention as amended
by the 1967 Protocol, a refugee is:
"A person who owing to a well-founded fear
of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a
particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his
nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself
of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being
outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such
events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it..".[3]
Dateline’s report
emphasises the economic hardship facing the family, with no suggestion that
they suffered, or feared, persecution.
Dateline also encourages
the viewer to question the extent to which the family experienced poverty. The narrator explains that the Khoder
family did not have enough money to buy a cot, but we are also told that they
spent $80 000 trying to reach Australia. Dateline’s story fails to provide a comprehensive overview of
the country from which the Khoder family fled. The viewer is not informed that Lebanon is hosting about a
million Syrian refugees. Further, as a result of the influx of Syrian refugees
in Lebanon, a country of approximately 4 million permanent residents[4],
the UNHCR states that, “heath, education, and water and sanitation systems are all
over-stretched. In certain areas, security has become more tenuous – complicating governance and
aid delivery.”[5] Dateline
does not tell the viewer that many Lebanese residents are experiencing
poverty for the first time, as a direct result of the influx of refugees from
Syria, or that Syrian laborers have been employed at a cheaper rate than
Lebanese people, which has resulted in many Lebanese residents losing their
jobs[6].
The absence
of such information in Dateline’s
report brings the credibility of the report into question.
Dateline’s report heavily implicates
Hussein in the death of his family.
We are informed that Hussein was repeatedly instructed by his family not
to take the dangerous boat journey to Australia. Hussein’s brother tried to
convince him that he should spare the life of his wife and children, by leaving
them in Lebanon with the extended family.
Hussein, the Middle Eastern husband at the centre of Dateline’s story, neatly fits an ‘irrational,
self-entitled Middle Eastern’ man, an image at the forefront of an Australian
consciousness. A similar picture
of a Middle Eastern male often emerges when we discuss Western intervention in
Middle Eastern countries. As
Australians, we tell ourselves that we are a humanitarian nation where Western
women have a voice and are treated with dignity, respect and equality. To further imply that Hussein was irrational,
greedy and selfish (in attempting to seek asylum), we are shown photographs of the
family in Indonesia. We see Hussein smiling broadly, holding two giant papayas. We notice that he is fit and healthy
enough to climb high in a tree. Through
a particular collection of images, interviews and narration, the viewer is led
to believe that in both Lebanon and Indonesia, the family were neither facing
poverty, nor persecution.
Dateline’s report does not provide
any indication that asylum seekers may suffer particular hardships in transit
countries like Indonesia, on their way to Australia. There are a range of
reasons why asylum seekers do not remain in transit countries, including the
lack of opportunity to legally work, and an inability to provide their children
with access to education. Many
countries have not signed the Refugee Convention, complicating access to basic
human rights. In an analysis of Dateline’s
narrow representation of the experience of asylum seeking, it is worth
emphasising that the Khoder family were not the only people that drowned in the
incident. Dateline presents the tragedy through the experience of one family,
that an uninformed viewer could easily define as ‘country hopping’ and
opportunistic. It is somewhat logical
for the viewer to assume that, because many that drowned were from the same
village as the Khoders, all of those on the boat were persecution-free.
Despite
its skewed representation of the asylum seeker experience that encourages the
viewer to be outraged, I would argue that one aspect of the report was to
encourage the viewer to feel sadness.
However, the report needed to provide a more comprehensive examination
of the background, to both the family at the centre of their story, and the
experience of seeking asylum. Narrator and journalist act as an authority in an
investigative piece. We have extra
reason to trust her, as she is an award-winning journalist on SBS. Problematically, the viewer can easily label
the narrator as a left-wing-biased ‘bleeding-heart’. The camera dwells on photographs of the dead asylum
seekers. The narrator/journalist dramatically
pauses in the voiceover in a sensationalistic manner. Her attempt to generate compassion
seem manipulative, her logic, irrational.
Her selective use of information encourages the viewer to think that
this family is neither struck by poverty, nor in fear of persecution.
An interview[7]
with the journalist, (included on Dateline’s
website some time after the story aired on SBS) brings the validity of the
report into question. The interview reveals that Hussein was increasingly
worried that his family might become caught up in explosions and suicide bombings in
Lebanon. In an environment where Australia’s
political representatives are eager to paint asylum seekers in a negative
light, the absence of this piece of information is particularly insidious. Dateline
perpetuates the myth of the asylum seeker as an exclusively economic migrant. It
is not enough for Dateline to
complement their story with additional interviews and extra information on
their website. Standing alone, the
report provides both an inaccurate representation of the family at the centre
of its story, and acts to reinforce simplistic, negative myths about asylum
seekers.
Recently,
the compassion of the Australian government has been brought into question, via
accusations that Australia ignored distress calls from the boat involved in the
tragedy. I wonder if the story encourages the general public to think these
accusations are less credible?[8] Do media representation of these claims
against Australia appear to emerge primarily from the ‘unreliable’ voice of
the father at the centre of the
report?
As
well as excluding crucial information that brings the refugee status of both
the family, and all boat travelling asylum seekers, into question, Dateline uses a number of selective and
misleading images to encourage the viewer to rely on Western stereotypes about
Middle Eastern people, Muslims and terrorists. These stereotypes of a non-Australian Other form part of the
Australian consciousness. The
report attempts to generate outrage over the opinion of a single Lebanese
Sheikh, Ali Khoder, who resides in Quabeit, the village from which the family
at the centre of the tragedy resided. The voiceover sets the scene for the story, explaining that
the people in Qabeit have come to
grieve, and to vent their anger at Australia. The report presents the anger using only the voice of the
Sheikh. The viewer can identify the Sheikh[9]
as a religious man, through his title, headdress and other clothes. His supposed
religious extremism is signified by his aggressive tone and his ‘irrational’
outburst. His irrationality is
also represented by his oversimplification of Australia’s asylum seeker
policies. Dateline’s website[10]
encourages the viewer to believe a particular story about the Sheikh, by
highlighting their report with a quote from him, “Australia, shame on you, that
your new rulers have reached the stage of killing people”[11].
Dateline’s report
encourages the viewer to believe that the Sheikh is an authority in Qabeit. It achieves this by presenting him as
the sole voice at the public gathering. We see several other people talking at the gathering, but the
report provides no subtitles. We
are to rely on Dateline’s authority
that the whole village is angry, the absence of subtitles reinforces that these
people don’t speak the same language as ‘us’, the Australian viewer. The report
relies on a number of assumptions, about the Middle East and Muslims, that an
Australian viewer brings with them, to the act of viewing the report. The
Sheik’s words, and Dateline’s manufactured
image of him, reminds us that religious people supposedly have (a dangerous
amount of) authority in Middle Eastern countries. Through the representations of the Sheikh, we are reminded
that Middle Eastern people are potential terrorists. The Sheikh reminds us of images of violent, religious
extremists that have propagated in the media with particularly visciousness
since September 11.
A
subsequent interview with the report’s journalist[12]
and the follow up story, airing on SBS’s Dateline
two weeks later, 15/10/2013[13],
reveals the extent to which Dateline’s report misleads the viewer. We discover that rather than being
exclusively angry at Australia, the people from Qabeit blamed, “anyone and
everyone for the deaths”. We also
learn that the Sheikh is actually Hussein’s cousin. This fact has significance because it could suggest that his
anger toward Australia is a sign of the grieving process, rather than the consequence
of religious extremism, that which the viewer is encouraged to believe. It
further suggests that the Sheikh’s views toward Australia were not necessarily those
of the entire village, and that the Sheikh might not be the authority in the
village. Overall, the story relies on, and reinforces, assumptions that an
ignorant general public have been encouraged to make about asylum seekers,
terrorists, people from the Middle East, and Muslims, and the manufactured
interconnections between these.
Imagine,
for example, if I decided to interview fundamentalist Christian, Wendy Francis,
in an investigative piece about the topic of Abortion in Australia. I decided to base my story on a single
interview with Francis, without presenting the views of anyone else in the
community. Then, let’s say that I take
this imaginary piece about Abortion in Australia and show it on overseas
television. What would foreigners think of Australians? What if we called Francis an ‘Abortion
Expert’, or suggested to the viewer that she was somehow an authority in the
Australian community?
Dateline’s report relies on
popular misconceptions of asylum seekers, the Middle East, terrorism and
Muslims in order to deliver a story.
The selective images help to compartmentalise and define that which is
not supposedly not ‘us’, the viewer.
The public’s response, evidenced by viewer comments[14],
suggests that the report largely reinforces negative perceptions of asylum
seekers. While it is not Dateline’s
responsibility to provide exclusively positive representations of asylum
seekers, it is irresponsible to rely on misinformation and sensationalism to
gain the attention of the viewer. The report acts to reinforce negative
perceptions of asylum seekers and merely encourages the viewer to define
themselves in opposition to a Muslim, Middle Eastern, terrorist Other.
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