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Sunrise apologises for ill-timed vision but rejects exploitation claims

Andrew O'Keefe & Monique Wright deny a British doctor was subjected to a "stitch-up" in an interview.

2015-01-12_2226Weekend Sunrise hosts Andrew O’Keefe and Monique Wright have apologised for footage of the Gaza conflict while interviewing “accidental Zionist” British doctor Qanta Ahmed.

Ahmed, who was promoting Project Rozana, an initiative training doctors treating children at Israel’s Hadassah hospital, later wrote in The Spectator that she was physically shocked after watching the interview back. The interview included footage of “mortally wounded Palestinian children”

“I had unwittingly collaborated in my own exploitation by the Australian broadcaster who chose to cast me not as an anti-Islamist Muslim physician volunteering in pursuit of coexistence but as a vapid tool serving the malignant construct of two-dimensional anti-Semitic caricature of Zionism.”

The war footage had clearly been assembled in advance of my live interview without prior knowledge of what I would say. In an unseen control room, to the producers’ signal, as I responded with words like ‘coexistence’, ‘integration’ or ‘pluralism’, a technician pulled the trigger and rolled the stock ‘Israel as a terrorist state’ footage; detonating my truthful and universal message.” she wrote.

“To be whored out as I strive as an ambassador  for a philanthropic mission with universal reach, to be debased as an instrument despite my decades long authority as a physician and Muslim humanist is nothing but obscene.”

But a Right of Reply letter from the Seven hosts published in the same journal rejected her claims of a ‘stitch-up.’

“Some of the footage we used showed children in Palestinian hospitals without referencing the conflict at all. Other parts of the footage was, perhaps, too bluntly illustrative of tensions between Muslim and Jewish populations in Israel and Palestine, on which so much of the Islamist hostility you discussed is based. And admittedly, we did use some footage that was inappropriate to what you were discussing at the exact moment it was played, but was very illustrative of what had been discussed prior to its display i.e. the grave injuries, both psychological and physical, sustained by children as a result of ongoing conflicts between Israel and Palestine. This was merely an issue of timing and was in no way intended to cast you as “tool serving the malignant media construct of a two-dimensional anti-Semitic caricature of Zionism”. There was nothing “deliberate” or “opportunistic” about it. As a “veteran media commentator” you must know that, from time to time, especially when the hosts veer off script to follow a particular train of thought of the guest, the wrong vision goes up at the wrong time. For that, I apologise. Sometimes these things happen on morning television,” they wrote.

“But taken as a whole, we cannot see how any reasonable person could argue that we exploited you in any way. Indeed, the comments from our viewers afterwards demonstrated that your position was taken for exactly what it is. To suggest that we came with any agenda, either designed to promote Hamas or to debase you, is insulting in the extreme. It also shows an absence of inquiry into our long record of promoting reasoned discussion, even when the tone of that discussion cuts across the prevailing orthodoxies. I encourage all readers of your article to watch the segment and judge for themselves.”

The Sunrise hosts suggested Ahmed’s claims were “baseless and libelous comments.”

Meanwhile in an unrelated exchange, Andrew O’Keefe and News Corp columnist Rita Panahi disagreed during an interview on the topic of Islamic extremists.

“We need to start discussing intelligently the issues we have with the Muslim community,” Panahi said.

“What can we do in the Muslim community to bring them into the mainstream even more.”

But O’Keefe told her, “But we’ve already been discussing this! We’ve been discussing this for a long time Rita.”

“Every time a fundamentalist Christian in the United States bombs an abortion clinic or bombs a synagogue do we hold all the Christians in the world accountable for that?

“You’re holding the majority responsible for a minority.”

Via: Fairfax, News Corp