Ahmed: Sunrise broadcast ‘obscene’

A FIERY debate has broken out between acclaimed physician and journalist Dr Qanta Ahmed and Channel Seven’s Weekend Sunrise program, after the former accused the breakfast show of reducing her to “a vapid tool serving the malignant media construct of a two-dimensional anti-Semitic caricature of Zionism”.

Rather than the anchors’ conduct, Ahmed took issue with the use of footage from the recent Israel-Hamas war – depicting the Palestinian perspective – which rolled alongside her interview, in which she discussed notions of “pluralism” and “egalitarianism” in Israeli medicine among other things.

The AJN can confirm that the Executive Council of Australian Jewry is currently in discussions with Channel Seven about the broadcast, which aired late last year.

New York-based Ahmed is a Muslim who has criticised Islamic extremism, and publicly declared her support for Israel. She was in Australia during November raising awareness for Project Rozana – an initiative launched in 2013 in which partners including Hadassah Australia are seeking to improve medical services for Palestinians.

In an article published over the weekend in UK-based publication The Spectator, Ahmed wrote that on viewing the broadcast of the interview, she was physically shocked and accused the show of “rank media opportunism”.

“I had unwittingly collaborated in my own exploitation by the Australian broadcaster,” she wrote.

“I felt intensely angry. 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,” she concluded.

On Sunday, Weekend Sunrise hosts Andrew O’Keefe and Monique Wright responded in a strongly worded letter to Ahmed, also published by The Spectator. The pair described Ahmed’s complaints as “baseless and libellous”.

Though acknowledging that some of the footage was not aptly selected or perhaps poorly timed, “taken as a whole, we cannot see how any reasonable person could argue that we exploited you in any way,” they wrote.

“To suggest that we came with any agenda, either designed to promote Hamas or to debase you, is insulting in the extreme.”

Both pieces have been widely viewed and elicited extensive comments.

PHOEBE ROTH

Qanta Ahmed on Weekend Sunrise.