Four Corners Essay

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Corners is an Australian television program, broadcast on the ABC channel, that could best be described as an investigative documentary style program presenting current affairs. It is Australia’s longest running current affairs program which has now been running for 56 years, first premiering in 1961. Four Corners has gained a positive reputation for presenting facts with limited opinion based content, generally following a different structure to other current affairs programs. However, any investigative journalism program has the potential to set the tone of the program and present the information with a certain perspective. Since its inception, Four Corners has exposed scandals, triggered numerous inquiries, reported on confronting taboos …show more content…

One of the first pieces of footage to be shown is a young boy who is hooded, shackled and strapped to a restraint chair by a number of guards and then left there for hours. The basis of this episode is the youth detention system in the Northern Territory that incarcerates children as young as ten years old, in barbaric, inhumane conditions at the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in 2014. The program discusses six boys between the ages of fourteen and seventeen who were detained in the isolation wing of the detention center for up to 23 hours per day for up to fifteen days straight. All of the boys who are shown in the program are Indigenous youth. The CCTV footage of the boys clearly shows the children displaying signs of being deeply distressed. One of the young boys is asking repeatedly why he is in there and when he is going to be released, while a group of prison officers can be seen on the other side of the steel door laughing at his anguish and inappropriately commenting. The boys being held in the isolation wing were deprived of basic necessities, such as running water and sunlight. The weather conditions in the Northern Territory are extremely hot and humid, the cells were without any form of cooling, such as fans or air conditioning. A lawyer being interviewed on the program, representing the North Australia Aboriginal Justice Agency, was visibly distressed when being questioned about the treatment of the boys and the conditions that he witnessed whilst inside the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre. He described the conditions in the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre as goulish, medieval and pure hell. Four Corners also showed footage of prison guards using tear gas on the boys at close range for up to eight minutes, with the boys then being shackled and dragged outside to be sprayed with a fire hose. The boys can be heard in

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