The Australian - posted in full as may not be accessible to all
Marketer made Struggle Street.
Helen Kellie: the marketer behind SBS series
A marketing executive without journalistic experience who cannot recall how often, if at all, she had visited Mount Druitt before this week, oversaw production of Struggle Street, a documentary that has humiliated and infuriated the local community.
SBS chief content officer Helen Kellie, who leads its “editorial direction”, joined the broadcaster three years ago, moving to Australia for the role from Britain, where she held senior marketing and communication roles at the BBC. Before that, she held marketing roles at Reckitt Benckiser, the consumer-goods giant behind popular brands such as Dettol, Mortein, Finish washing powder and Nurofen.
“I haven’t been a journalist and, indeed, I’m not the producer of this show,” Ms Kellie, who has a degree in chemistry from Oxford University, told The Australianyesterday.
From the first cut of Struggle Street, which records the daily life of families in Mount Druitt in Sydney’s western suburbs, to the provocative promotional footage released before last night’s premiere, Ms Kellie was involved in reviewing the footage and making changes. The idea for Struggle Street came from a British program called Skint that looked at unemployment in Britain’s poverty-stricken areas. It was controversial and sparked a high number of viewer complaints, but rated well.
Ms Kellie, who reports directly to SBS managing director Michael Ebeid, said she had seen Skint, which was made by the same production house, Keo, that producedStruggle Street.
SBS knew Struggle Street was going to be controversial. It expected the backlash to the point Ms Kellie said the organisation had prepared for it, with a communications plan in place.
“We knew it would be polarising, we knew it would be controversial,” she said, indicating it was not the first “crisis” in her career.
“In terms of ‘did we prepare for this?’, clearly whenever we do a show at SBS, and we do a lot of provocative programs, particularly in the documentary space, just as we have done for Go Back (To Where You Came From), just as we did for First Contact, we are really rigorous in our preparation process about how we prepare — not just the communication but also the risk assessment, the due process through the production, how we handle it and the relationship with our production partners.”
When The Australian visited SBS yesterday — despite a protest being staged outside its headquarters at Artarmon in Sydney’s north and extensive media coverage critical of the broadcaster — executives did not appear fazed by the controversy or negative publicity. They welcomed it and were hopeful the program would rate well.
Industry sources speculate that SBS has deliberately been trying to lift its ratings to take advantage of legislation changes that allow the public broadcaster to increase its advertising minutes. SBS does not have a large advertising or marketing budget and does not attract the audience levels of the commercial networks or the ABC.
It was relying on the promotional footage for Struggle Street to spark outrage and attract publicity. While there are likely to be ongoing complaints about distortion and misleading editing, the first episode revealed the promotional material was far more provocative than the program itself.
The pre-program footage was so offensive to his community that Blacktown Mayor Stephen Bali labelled the three-part series “poverty porn” yesterday while co-ordinating the protest outside SBS headquarters, with council garbage trucks forming a blockade. Mr Bali said the episodes contained “engineered” and “completely false” scenes.
Ms Kellie has rejected many of Mr Bali’s allegations, claiming they are “unsubstantiated”. “If there’s been any form of distortion, we take that seriously,” she said. “It’s a reputational thing for SBS. It’s also a huge reputational thing for Keo. They’re a very credible program-making team.”
Ms Kellie said she and a team undertook a rigorous process of interrogating the crew, which had spent six months filming families in Mount Druitt, to ensure the finished product was a fair, balanced and accurate.
“My role is to be one step removed and to look at this with some objectivity and say, ‘does this show stand up to our editorial integrity?’ ” she said. “ ‘Does this show deliver what we wanted? Do we stand by the purpose of this show?’, and I can say that we do and I think my background is extremely valid for that. As a content editorial team we’ve been looking at this from the first cut of the episodes with Keo.”
The Australian asked Ms Kellie how many times she had visited Mount Druitt before Tuesday. During 10 minutes of questioning on the topic, Ms Kellie would not provide a definitive answer.
She said that she might have driven through Mount Druitt on her way somewhere but would need to go back through her diary to check.
“This is not relevant. I’ve told you, this is not relevant,” she said. “The relevancy is about the program and the integrity of the program-makers.
“I’m not going to talk about the number of hours I have or haven’t spent somewhere ... You’re asking me a geography question.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/politics-news
