News

Selling Struggle Street with poverty porn

Struggle Street, starting on SBS this week, caused a huge furore and record ratings. It is the latest of many fights about the ethics and processes of that fly on the wall.

6 May 2015 12:00

David Tiley

[This is archived content and may not display in the originally intended format.]

Film

Image: company production still for Struggle Street.

Struggle Street, the three part documentary series by KEO Films, launched last night after probably the largest storm of publicity for any documentary in Australia before its release.

The result was a massive ratings success for SBS. It took 1.305m people around Australia, which is five percent of the total population, and enabled SBS to beat everything except the commercial network news and Masterchef.

Unlock this content?

Access this content and more

Join Now Login

David Tiley

David Tiley was the Editor of Screenhub from 2005 until he became Content Lead for Film in 2021 with a special interest in policy. He is a writer in screen media with a long career in educational programs, documentary, and government funding, with a side order in script editing. He values curiosity, humour and objectivity in support of Australian visions and the art of storytelling.