SBS journo fired over Anzac tweets

By Rashida Yosufzai
April 26, 2015, 3:08 pm
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An SBS journalist has been sacked for making disrespectful comments about Anzac soldiers.
An SBS journalist has been sacked for making "disrespectful" comments about Anzac soldiers.
SBS says a sports presenter who made highly inappropriate comments about diggers was fired because audiences could no longer respect or trust him.

The multicultural broadcaster on Sunday sacked football journalist Scott McIntyre for a series of tweets on Anzac Day that Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull described as "despicable".

McIntyre began his tweets on the centenary of the Gallipoli landings by criticising what he said was the "cultification [sic] of an imperialist invasion".

"Remembering the summary execution, widespread rape and theft committed by these brave Anzacs in Egypt, Palestine and Japan," he said.

SBS managing director Michael Ebeid on Sunday labelled the remarks inappropriate and disrespectful, saying they breached the broadcaster's code of conduct and social media policy.

"It's not tenable to remain on air if your audience doesn't respect or trust you," he said.

Besides causing outrage on social media, the tweets also caught the eye of the minister, who said it was difficult to think of anything more offensive or inappropriate.

"Despicable remarks which deserve to be condemned," Mr Turnbull tweeted.

While the minister was unavailable for comment following McIntyre's sacking, his Liberal colleague Jamie Briggs applauded the decision, saying the comments went beyond being offensive.

However, some criticised SBS for firing McIntyre, including journalist Hugh Riminton, who is also a board member of Soldier On, an organisation that supports injured soldiers.

Riminton said the tweets were untimely, immature and in one case offensively wrong.

"But lest we forget, Our Diggers also died for free speech," he said.

Human rights commissioner Tim Wilson said McIntyre's freedom of speech was not being curtailed.

"We're talking about political interpretations of history and that is open for debate," Mr Wilson said.

"And he will be judged very harshly."

https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/27357696/sbs-journo-fired-over-anzac-tweets/

Free speech brah.

Not in this country mate. :-$ :-$

A genuine fuckwit finally exposed for his underlying hate of Australia

didn't realise this was already posted. I only really visit the Australian Football Forum. He deserves to be fired for not knowing enough historical fact and argument.

Free speech means that you can speak without fear of violent retribution, not a guarantee that your stupidity will not have repercussions.

He deliberately insulted his audience, SBS put it nicely when they stated that his position was untenable once the audience doesn't trust or respect him.

Wonder if he'll be offered a job at the guardian or the abc

you're making quite a presumption there son

you want to live in a country where a journalist cant publicly express his opinion without being fired for it?

oh well, I guess we already do huh

what kind of standards of reporting should we expect from such conditions?
oh thats right, the network and in this case government line is toed on the big issues.

dissent for pointless political footballs is only allowed to create an illusion of balance.

A truely ODD character, should have made a FFT account and stayed off the Tweeting.

Huge slip up and I personally never liked anything he brought to the table football wise.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/sbs-presenter-scott-mcintyre-sacked-over-inappropriate-anzac-day-tweets-20150426-1mtbx8.html

But some commentators defended McIntyre's right to free speech. Ten News' Hugh Riminton tweeted that the presenter's comments were "untimely, immature and in one case offensively wrong. But lest we forget, Our Diggers also died for free speech."

Riminton is on the board of charity organisation Soldier On Australia, which supports Australian servicemen and women who have been physically and psychologically wounded in conflicts.


Edited by MUNRUBENMUZ: 26/4/2015 10:20:27 PM

Now if only channel 10 had the guts to fire bolt as well.

Wow...can't say anything about the cock sucking ANZACS these days.

My biggest issue is that most of his points are unsupported by historical evidence. That is something a journalist should be fired for.

It does raise the issue of what does constitute free speech in our society.

What he said was very ill considered and confrontational, particularly with the timing, but it does highlight a weakness in when, where, how and why comments can be made on any topic. Must we all hold the same views? Only say what we think people want to hear? It would be a sad place if that was the case.

Overall though, if he potentially contravened his employment contract then it would make sense for him to go. I tend to also agree that he did not seem to bring a lot to the table for our code, which is solely from what I had observed, but in this instance it is a pity that he took the action he did on a special day of national rememberance, especially with many unsubstantiated comments. .Poor form.

Edited by heart_fan: 26/4/2015 10:38:08 PM

The Roar

Self-loathing left-wing shit stain, got what he deserved.

Edited by Captain Haddock: 26/4/2015 10:40:46 PM

Argh fuck it.

It's all too hard.


Edited by MUNRUBENMUZ: 26/4/2015 11:45:48 PM

Precisely, but freedom of speech doesn't require historical/scientific evidence does it? Perhaps we could put this one down to journalistic integrity.

I wonder where the Wapanese will end up next? The paradox of the old mate 'whitey' McIntyre. Constantly on the look out for a new culture as a surrogate. Only to find out that his newfound refuge is less accepting of him than his native country, Australia. :oops:

Always thought he was bland on podcasts and his highlights work was poor.

Either way, can't be too upset with this outcome in this day and age of social media shit storms.

-PB

Edited by paulbagzFC: 26/4/2015 10:54:50 PM

Funny thing he was very anti Japanese in that article about Arnold in Japan.
ALsoi supporting the Palestinian team I thought the Ottoman empire was unpopular in that region.

hehe no ones mentioned SBS have a limited budget now and culling him is opportunistic, which means they can keep the many shit guest hosts they have that all dribble the same shit like parrots. So he's just collateral, one of the many parrots

Lesamundo and Foz always got the maximum introspection out of the games. All these gits do now is ramble, and they seem hell bent intent on keeping Zdrilla despite whoever else gets the chop. They should just do an Aussie abroad segment and drop the useless crap :)

He has free speech. He clearly exercised that right when he sent the tweets. That doesn't mean there aren't reprocussions for what he says or does.

No it isn't.

McIntyre referred to the Australian public as poorly read drinkers and gamblers, deliberately insulting words against his audience.

He made several stupid claims that are not supported by historical evidence and others that are just plain wrong. Widespread rape by the ANZACs in Japan? No, they were our allies in WWI and Australian soldiers have never fought in Japan. The closest they have ever come is being based in Japan after WWII as part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force.

McIntyre was not fired for airing his opinion, he was fired for violating his employers policies on a Twitter account that stated he was an SBS employee. He caused a huge PR disaster for his employer and damaged their brand. Anyone in any industry would get the sack for that, it is what adults call consequences, being a journalist does not give an automatic exemption.

He was never a good journalist and has gone downhill of late. Has anyone here ever read one of his articles and gained any insight at all? No, half the posters on here do a better job. SBS should take the chance to give his position to someone who actually understands the game and has something to offer us as football fans. Kate Cohen would be a good place to start.

What an appalling excuse for an ill-educated, sucking at the public teat, lieing, piece of trash.

Hey, I'm just excercising my imaginary right to free speech and I'm sure he'll be the first one to honourably line up and defend me!

:p



Edited by SWandP: 26/4/2015 11:16:31 PM

+1. Said everything I wanted to say but probably better.

my first problem with his reading of history, he described the allies attack on the Ottoman empire as a imperialistic venture. Well WWI was a monumental clusterfuck caused by a whole bunch of crazy little things, no one thing was to blame and no major player was free from blame. The Ottomans were a major player. Attacking the Dardanelles was a decent military strategy. It wasn't imperialistic. Other attacks on the Ottoman's holdings elsewhere could be described as imperialistic but not the Gallipoli campaign. That was meant to knock the Turks out of the war quickly and resupply Russia. Hell if it had of succeeded the Ottoman's might have kept their hold on the middle-east, we wouldn't have had Sykes-Picot and we might have avoided many of the world's current issues. Then again, those issues could well be worse.

The conduct of the ANZACS in WWI was sometimes less than exemplary. At other times it was exemplary. That was the nature of warfare. And still is. Again there were no 'good guys' in WWI. The whole thing was a mistake and all sides were responsible for atrocities/war crimes.

He then jumps into WWII and seems to paint the Allies and the Australians as 'bad guys' in this war. Well that is very wrong. The allies killed millions of civilians in indiscriminate bombing campaigns in all theatres of war, used racial profiling to round up citizens into internment camps for national security and then employed the deadliest weapon then known to man killing tens of thousands in an instant. Yet the allies were, without a shadow of a doubt, the good guys in that conflict. Undeniably. If you decry the horrors of one side you should not disregard the horrors of the other. The Japanese had been raping, pillaging, subjugating and murdering millions of people throughout Asia in their imperialist campaigns for 35 years or more. How are allied crimes more important to note than those? There would be very few Westerners who would even know the names of more than 3 Japanese war crimes. Hell I would be impressed if anyone could name 3 off the top of their head without help.

But a hell of a lot of people know the crimes of the Allies but we don't celebrate the crimes. We celebrate the sacrifice, the noble intentions and try to keep alive the memory of how bad war is SO IT NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN! So that regimes like Imperial Japan's can never again brainwash a nation into thinking war could bring glorious honour to empire and family.

Scott just flew off the handle because he probably heard some stupid yobbo shout something stupid and ignorant about Arabs and terrorism and foreigners etc. Scott then decided to respond by showing his own bias and ignorance.

Langan

beat me to it and put it better than I could have done. Outstanding post. Very measured and you've basically nailed it.

Attacking the Dardanelles was a great idea. If it had worked, it would have ended the war much earlier and there is a very decent chance there would not have been a Russian Revolution (contentious, but I've studied it in some detail at undergrad level). At least not a Russian Revolution at that point in time.

The problem was it was so poorly executed.

Although I feel a bit sorry for Scott McIntyre, he should have known better. And his post was ill-informed.

However what I would like is for the Australian public to actually become slightly more educated about the role of their troops in the First World War. Most of us were basically raised to believe that the Australian and New Zealand troops were somehow victims of a British conspiracy in which British casualties might as well have been non-existent. It's utter crap. British casualties far outnumbered Australian ones.

Not that we should forget, the sacrifices of those in Gallipoli, but we shouldn't fetish it, as we seem to do. Australian troops actually genuinely did make a genuine difference on the Western Front and, in some quarters, don't get enough praise for that. Having said that, I've read of Australian troops essentially committing war crimes on the Western Front. And nobody ever talks about that.