TV

SBS Has Pulled The Ad For Their New Doco Series ‘Struggle Street’ After Complaints It Mocks Participants

The show which premieres next week has been called out as "publicly-funded poverty porn".

by Meg Watson  3 May 2015

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Putting an end to what’s been a truly shocking week for SBS, the broadcaster has decided to stop airing the ad for its new documentary show Struggle Street.

Due to premiere next week, the three-part series follows the lives of 10 residents in Mount Druitt on the outskirts of Western Sydney, and documents the various hardships they face in their community. Produced by KEO Films Australia, the show aims to “give a voice to those doing it tough right on the doorstep of Australia’s most affluent cities”.

After this promo started airing on national TV, some in the community voiced outrage over the way their home was being portrayed. Blacktown Mayor Stephen Bali made a direct complaint to Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull in the hopes he would put pressure on the broadcaster just as he did with the controversial comments made by SBS commentator Scott McIntyre. When that didn’t work, Cr Bali launched a Change.org petition — which now has 862 supporters — calling on SBS management to suspend the documentary until all participants are provided access to the full footage and given the ability to veto anything “demeaning, offensive and damaging”.

“I was appalled after being shown the first episode,” he wrote. “What I saw wasn’t a documentary, it was simply publicly-funded poverty porn … This is an unethical, damaging, exploitative, trash ‘documentary’ that has misrepresented local people, and our whole community.”

Peta Kennedy, a resident who featured in the trailer has also publicly spoken out against the show. “I called them and was crying to them today,” she told The Daily Telegraph. “It’s like they’re saying this is who we are and this is where we live — it’s not true how they are portraying it, especially for the young ones that live here like they’ll never get a job.”

Cr Bali has echoed this in his petition claiming “some of the participants have already suffered abuse, insults, bullying, intimidation and other mistreatment as a result of the promotional material”.

And, though the SBS managing director Michael Ebeid has pulled the promo as a “gesture of goodwill”, the series is going ahead as planned.

Speaking out against the backlash, series producer David Galloway has asked viewers to reserve judgment until they’ve seen the whole series.

“I think when people see the full context of the documentary in three hours, they’ll see we go into a lot of detail and depth about the families and individuals living there and the backstories — why they continue to struggle and why they are facing challenges,” he told The Daily Telegraph.

As a result of the controversy, the reaction on social media is fairly negative with many labelling the show as classist.

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Struggle Street will premiere on SBS this Wednesday, May 6 at 8.30pm.