Dateline

DATELINE 2020

Tuesday 25 February 09:30 PM

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Adam Liaw reports from Vietnam to see if a love of food can help the country’s street kids and orphans find a brighter future. An Australian-run cooking school in Hanoi is training some of Vietnam’s most disadvantaged young people to become five-star chefs. But can the students Adam meets handle the heat in the kitchen? Adam also ventures into Hanoi’s underbelly to meet the “Children of the Dust”; kids living on the streets in conditions that leave him shocked.

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The show won two awards in this week’s New York Festivals TV and Film Awards. Hong Kong: Behind the Frontline won Gold in International Affairs category, while Losing Greg: A Dementia Journey claimed Bronze in Health/Medical Information category.

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Dateline - From Russia With No Immunity

Tuesday 9 Jun at 09:30 PM

As COVID-19 shuts borders, one Australian with MS is trying to get to Russia for a stem cell transplant, another has just had treatment and can’t get home. Dateline follows their remarkable journeys.

The show returns next Tuesday (September 1) after a two month break.

Returns Tuesday 16 March 9:30 pm

Australia’s longest-running international current affairs show, Dateline, returns to explore global issues in a way that Australians can relate to – from the ongoing impact of Agent Orange in Vietnam to the dark world of online predators in the UK. The team of next-gen journalists at The Feed will serve up their unique mix of news, investigations, interviews and satire this year.

Digital Predators

This is a story no parent can afford to miss. During global COVID-19 lockdowns police reported a huge increase in the number of people viewing and sharing child sexual abuse images online. In the 1990s there were 10,000 such images - today there are more than 47 million[2]. Evan Williams reports from the UK where the Government has pledged to become the safest place in the world for kids to use the internet. He meets the police officers, counsellors and investigators trying to stop the proliferation of abuse material, and he meets victims and perpetrators who bravely share their stories.

Dateline producer Hareem Khan has quit to join News Corp’s on-demand audio arm, NewsCast, as an audio producer.

SBS’s Dateline returns to break new ground with global issues and events in 2022

Dateline returns Tuesday 15 March at 9:30pm.

Australia’s longest-running international current affairs show SBS Dateline returns Tuesdays on 15 March at 9:30pm in 2022. The iconic factual series continues to explore global issues deepening our understanding of the world around us and giving a platform to distinctive voices that would otherwise be unseen and unheard.

The series returns on Tuesday 15 March at 9:30pm with Missing in China (a co-production with Channel 4); a story about the tens of thousands of ethnic Kazakhs caught up in China’s Muslim repression.

As Beijing welcomes the world for the Winter Olympics in February 2022, many countries including Australia, have joined a diplomatic boycott of the games citing ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in China’s Xinjiang province. China’s systematic repression of Muslim Uyghurs has been widely reported, but Dateline exposes a brutal new chapter; China’s equally systematic campaign to detain, jail, re-educate and use as forced labour members of the region’s second biggest Muslim minority – the ethnic Kazakhs. Many have family links across the border in Kazakhstan where Dateline meets the mothers husbands and fathers trying to find their missing loved ones or get them released from detention in China. Evan Williams reports on the growing number of detention facilities and hears testimony of the incarceration without trial, the torture and sexual assault of detainees, as well as forced sterilisations and abortions on Muslim women, in what has been labelled ‘ethnic cleansing’.

Executive Producer, Georgina Davies, said : "With two years of international border closures, Australians are, more than ever, looking for connections with the rest of the world. I’m excited to bring those connections to our audiences with a new season of Dateline in 2022.

“This year, our team continues to report from the far-flung corners of the globe, bringing diverse perspectives to the stories that matter. We’ll go behind the headlines, meeting the people whose lives are impacted by global events, and we’ll shine a spotlight on the underreported issues. We want to keep Australians engaged in what goes on overseas, bringing the world into their loungerooms and onto their smartphones, through relevant and dynamic storytelling”.

Upcoming episodes of Dateline include:

Murder in Malta

Darren Mara returns to the country of his heritage to unravel a dark chapter in the history of Malta - the murder of the country’s most famous journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who uncovered corruption at the highest level and was killed in a car bombing. Her family’s ongoing fight for justice has brought down the PM, but the masterminds of her murder have not yet faced trial. We explore the twists and turns of this crime and find out how it plunged this Mediterranean island nation into turmoil.

India’s Street Kids: Telling Their Own Story

Dateline meets Delhi’s tenacious street kid reporters getting the scoops that mainstream media can’t. We see the newspaper reporters of Balaknama in action - giving a voice to the kids of India’s slums. Dateline first visited this unique newspaper in 2017, now we’ve come back to see how lives have changed, and how the next generation of reporters are leading the newspaper through the global pandemic.

Italy’s 1 Euro Homes

With soaring Australian property prices making home ownership for the younger generation near impossible, imagine a place where you can buy a house for just $1.50. Picturesque rural Italian villages are looking to rejuvenate by attracting new buyers through a 1-Euro home ownership scheme. Reporter Evan Williams road-trips across the countryside to find out ‘what’s the catch’? And is the idea a sustainable solution for towns suffering from depopulation, or could migrants be the answer?

Butterflies Versus Cartels

Dateline looks at how Mexico’s cartels and a booming trade in avocadoes is threatening a natural wonder, the monarch butterfly. This environmentally crucial species migrates to Mexico each year creating a spectacular butterfly forest. Reporter Calliste Weitenberg travels to Michoacan state to find out if the butterflies can survive in a region where money wins over conservation.

Dateline airs at 9:30pm Tuesdays, preceded by Insight at 8:30pm and followed by The Feed at 10pm.

The World’s Happiest Country

Tuesday 25 October at 9.30pm

On Tuesday 7 March in its established timeslot at 9:30pm, Australia’s longest-running international current affairs show Dateline will explore global issues that deepen our understanding of the world around us, with this year’s line-up featuring stories from Japan, Jamaica, Turkey, Ukraine, Denmark, and more.

The 2023 season kicks off with a compelling story from Japan, reported by Kumi Taguchi. She goes inside the world of a controversial church, that some call a ‘cult’, now under investigation for its role in Japanese politics, and its connection to the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

This year, Dateline’s brand-new format features a diversified offering spanning two distinct stories per episode, with the inclusion of one short-form human interest story to complement the lead in-depth feature.

Dateline

Returns Tuesdays from 7 March at 9:30pm on SBS and SBS On Demand

Dateline is an award-winning international documentary series with a current affairs backbone. Each week, Dateline scours the globe to uncover special characters and a world of daring stories. In 2023, Dateline launches its new format featuring two impactful stories per week, including an in-depth feature and a shorter human-interest story.

Episode 1 Synopsis

The Church and the Assassin

Kumi Taguchi goes inside the world of a controversial church that some call a ‘cult.’ This Church is now under investigation for its role in Japanese politics since the assassination of Prime Minister Abe.

On July 8, 2022, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot. The shock assassination stopped the nation, and the headlines sold a captivating story: a mother bankrupted by a controversial church, a disillusioned son seeking retribution.

Kumi travels to Japan to uncover how this political violence has changed a country she holds a deep personal connection to.

With rare access inside the Japanese headquarters of The Unification Church, now known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, Kumi meets the members who claim they are being persecuted for their faith since the assassination of Abe. Some say they have been threatened, while others are frightened to acknowledge their faith.

The Unification Church is a new religious movement that was founded in Korea in 1954. The Church’s founder Reverend Sun Myung Moon was a self-proclaimed Messiah, born in what is now North Korea. Over the years, the church gained notoriety for its mass weddings and numerous splinter groups and foundations.

After Abe’s assassination, over 100 Japanese politicians revealed their ties to the Church, unravelling politics and plummeting the sitting government’s approval ratings.

As Kumi travels through Japan, she meets the families and lawyers who claim significant amounts of money have been lost through excessive donations to the Church. They say for years their issues with the Church have been ignored, until now.

Episode 2* *Synopsis

Breaking Up with Britain

The death of Queen Elizabeth II on 8 September 2022 sent shockwaves across the Commonwealth. Now, several former colonies, including Australia, are debating ditching the monarchy entirely.

Reporter Darren Mara travels to Jamaica, where constitutional tides are turning, and the government is pushing to become a republic.

Like Australia, Jamaica has a troubled history as a British colony. Darren visits sites at the heart of the nation’s history. He tours a slave house that was once home to the country’s British elite, while some 2,000 indentured servants toiled in its gardens.

The Caribbean was a crucial waypoint of the transatlantic slave trade, with an estimated 40% of enslaved Africans shipped to the islands. But from this history of subjugation, a spirit of resistance grew strong. The rebellious songs of Jamaica’s reggae music were the soundtrack of emancipation and continue to inspire a movement of independence.

Following a move by neighbouring Barbados, Darren meets the Jamaicans fighting for reparations, and others who still feel loyal to the crown.

Episode 3 Synopsis

Welcome Back to Syria

As children, the Awad sisters fled to Denmark to escape the war in Syria. 10 years later, authorities have ordered them to return. In this special Dateline, reporter Evan Williams investigates whether Denmark’s new hardline, deportation programs are a death sentence for thousands of Syrians.

Denmark and Syria are inextricably linked. Since the Syrian Civil War began in 2011, the Danes have taken in more than 34,000 Syrian refugees. Today, the Assad regime has reclaimed control of around 70 percent of Syria, but the war still rages with new threats emerging almost daily. And yet, in 2019, the Danish government became the first in Europe to classify certain areas of Syria as safe – cancelling the temporary protection visas of hundreds of refugees and ordering them to leave Denmark.

Seemingly at odds with the country’s socially progressive reputation, the move comes as Denmark’s left-wing government adopts the immigration policies of the right, chasing a “zero-asylum seeker” target. But the political manoeuvring has a huge, humanitarian cost.

The Awad Sisters Maryam (22) and Aya (19) have felt it. Having fled with their parents from Syria’s capital Damascus in the early days of the war, the sisters now consider themselves Danish. They grew up and were educated in Aarhus, the country’s second largest city, they speak fluent Danish and have no family left in Syria as even their parents have been granted political asylum in Denmark.

Evan meets the sisters as they prepare to fight their deportation order in court. They will argue that safety in Syria is a lie, especially for the families of those wanted by the regime, like their father. The Awad’s have waited over two years for their day in court, but Evan discovers that other Syrian refugees are in a more frightening limbo.

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2024 is a landmark year for SBS’s award-winning current affairs line-up, covering the most impactful local and global stories

Returning to Tuesdays from 5 March, don’t miss Insight at 8:30pm and Dateline at 9:30pm, which celebrates its milestone 40th year on air, on SBS and SBS On Demand.

In its established timeslot at 9:30pm, Australia’s longest-running international current affairs show Dateline will celebrate its historic 40th year on air in 2024. The landmark season will explore global issues that expand our understanding of the world around us, with this year’s line-up featuring stories from Venezuela, Romania, Syria, Netherlands, Germany, the U.S., and beyond.

The 2024 season premiere will see Australian performer, playwright, and Coda (children of deaf adults) Jodee Mundy travel to Pennsylvania to join the first Asian-American Coda camp for Deaf parents and their kids. Exploring multiple layers of identity, the episode is a moving look into how an immersive experience in sign language and Asian family-values can help these pre-teens connect with their Deaf parents.

Returns Tuesdays from 5 March at 9:30pm on SBS and SBS On Demand

Episode 1 Synopsis

Camp Coda: Children of Deaf Adults – Tuesday 5 March at 9:30pm AEDT on SBS and SBS On Demand

Dateline reporter Jodee Mundy travels to Pennsylvania to join the first Asian-American Coda camp for Deaf parents and their kids. Can an immersive experience in sign language and Asian family-values help these pre-teens connect with their Deaf parents?

Also airing this season

Romania’s Webcam Girls – will be available on SBS and SBS On Demand

Dateline investigates the state of Romania’s booming adult camgirl industry. Webcam studio owners say the business is perfectly legal and are fighting to prove their legitimacy. But following the arrest of US-born influencer Andrew Tate, who ran a webcam company in Romania, the industry is facing new scrutiny for sex trafficking. Dateline reporter Calliste Weitenberg explores the experiences of women working for the industry and uncovers a wild west of “ghost studios” with few rules and even less oversight.

Born Big – will be available on SBS and SBS On Demand

Nearly one in five children in America are obese and after decades of encouraging diet and exercise as treatment, parents are now being urged to look at more radical options: including bariatric surgery for 13-year-olds, and controversial weight loss drugs such as Ozempic.

Kumi Taguchi meets the American families turning to radical medical interventions to help their children with obesity.

Insight and Dateline will be available to stream on SBS On Demand with subtitles in Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese.

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Dateline reporter Jodee Mundy travels to Pennsylvania to join the first Asian-American Coda camp for Deaf parents and their kids. Can an immersive experience in sign language and Asian family-values help these pre-teens connect with their Deaf parents?

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