Australia's Channel 7 network has been found guilty by the press regulator of serious violations of the broadcasting code, after screening a report so extreme it was branded 'Freakshow TV' by Survival International. The report labelled Brazil's Suruwaha tribe as child murderers; ‘Stone Age' relics; and ‘one of the worst human rights violators in the world'. Survival complained to Australia's regulator ACMA after Channel 7 refused Survival's request to issue a correction to its report, broadcast on its Sunday Night programme.

In a landmark judgment, ACMA has now ruled that the Channel was guilty of breaking its racism clause – ‘provoking intense dislike, serious contempt or severe ridicule against a person or group' – believed to be the first time it has found a broadcaster guilty of this serious offence under the 2010 TV Code. It has also ruled that the Channel was guilty of broadcasting inaccurate material.

Dangerous rubbish: visiting the Suruwaha is "literally time-travelling back 10,000 years"; "threats of murder"; "lost tribes encourage murder of disabled children". Survival's Director Stephen Corry said, ‘This was one of the worst reports about contemporary tribal people we'd ever seen. The Indians were made out to be cruel and inhuman monsters, in the spirit of 19th century colonialist scorn for ‘primitive savages'.

‘What makes it even worse is that the Suruwaha have been under attack by fundamentalist missionaries for years, who are waging a campaign slandering them as child-murderers. The missionaries are behind a draft law to allow them to remove Indian children from their communities, something with horrifying echoes of the Stolen Generations scandal. The report portrays the Suruwaha as the 'worst human rights violators in the world'.