Steve Carey and Peter Morris of Channel Seven News should be commended on their powers of persuasion, in convincing Crikey that their story “Sudanese Gangs Caught on Camera” wasn’t riddled with falsehoods. Put simply, Crikey got snowed.

Channel Seven failed to answer any of the central issues in the Media Watch story (which can be read and viewed at abc.net.au/mediawatch).

How does Seven explain the pictures of a brawl shown over the words “Sudanese gangs caught on camera as the government shuts the door on African immigrants”, when there were no Sudanese men involved in that brawl?

How does Channel Seven reporter Peter Morris explain his statement that following that brawl a Sudanese man allegedly stole from the bottle shop before police were called (“a gang of Sudanese youths decided to take over a bottle shop fighting the staff and stealing alcohol before officers were called”), when the shoplifting incident was totally unrelated to the violent scenes, and in fact happened on a different day?

Was that not an attempt by Channel 7 to link the one scrap of video evidence it had of Sudanese wrongdoing (a man on his own shoplifting), with its claimed gang attack on the shop?

How does Channel 7 explain its decision to show pictures of a man being sprayed by police over the words “These security camera pictures show what Noble Park shopkeepers say they are continually subjected to: Police forced to use capsicum spray after a gang of Sudanese youths decided to take over a bottle shop” when in fact the man sprayed is not Sudanese but an Islander?

Why in that case did Channel 7 use pictures that made it difficult to identify the skin colour of the man arrested by Police, when clearer pictures that showed he was not African were on the tape (and used by Channel 9)?

Why when Channel 7 reported about the Sudanese immigrant “Liep Gony who died after being savagely bashed by rival gang members last week” did reporter not mention that those charged over his killing were white?

These are all questions Crikey might have directed at Channel Seven. Instead it satisfied itself with a response from Seven that amounted to: “no we didn’t”. Media Watch never set out to “discredit” Peter Morris and Seven News as the reporter claims: they did that all by themselves.

Seven’s excuse is that it didn’t show footage it had involving Sudanese men, because that might have identified the bottle shop or its employees. That’s a fudge. Seven had already shown interiors of the bottle shop and identified the suburb where it was located. Anyone could have identified it from that.

What’s more when it came to vision involving one of the employees Seven simply blurred his face. If it had vision showing Sudanese men and shop employees, couldn’t it have done the same thing?

Instead Seven left the suggestion hanging with Crikey readers, that it had incriminating pictures of Sudanese men but simply couldn’t show them. That’s nonsense and Crikey would have known it was if it had bothered to get the complete tape and view it. Media Watch did.

Sure there are scenes involving numbers of Sudanese men on the security camera tapes. But they aren’t doing anything much. Certainly they aren’t involved in any violence. Seven’s sneaky suggestion to Crikey that they have evidence of Sudanese men acting badly on tape but couldn’t show it is as disingenuous as the story that went to air.

There were plenty of questions for the other networks too.

Why, in stories ostensibly about African gang violence, did the Channel 9 and Channel 10 journalists include comments from a bottle shop employee describing an incident where a bottle was thrown at him, but ignored the fact that the attacker was not African?

How did Channel Ten come to report the line that it “… believes a man recently entered the Springvale police station vowing to rape and kill a female officer … the Federal Government shutting the door on African refugees until July next year because of concerns about their ability to integrate”, when police deny any such incident ever occurred?

As for bottle shop employee Geoff Heffernan: Media Watch approached him on matters of fact. He established who was arrested in the pictures shown (not Sudanese), who was involved in the brawl shown (not Sudanese) and who threw the bottle at him (not Sudanese).

Media Watch didn’t sugar coat the story. We stated clearly that “Media Watch isn’t saying there aren’t gangs in Noble Park or that there aren’t some Sudanese there who cause trouble”.

But our story was about the facts of what was put to air by the commercial networks. And despite Channel Seven’s attempts to dodge the issue, what was put to air was dishonest and unfair.