Djokovic court hearing plagued by livestream chaos

By Updates

January 10, 2022

Updates

Facebook Twitter Reddit WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Email Print Tumblr

Live feed of Serbian tennis star’s deportation suffers major technical difficulties as an old broadcast is hijacked with pornographic images

The Australian court hearing for Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic, who is appealing his visa cancellation, was repeatedly derailed with livestream feed issues, leaving many reporters and the public in the dark.

Before the hearing had even started, issues with getting the official Australian court broadcast to work led to delays. By the time that the hearing had begun, the issues had not been rectified.

Initially, the court reportedly shared a Microsoft Teams link that was quickly hijacked with “silly noises,” techno music, and even pornographic material, according to some accounts. The chaos forced officials to abandon it, resulting in a lawless and unmoderated broadcast followed by many journalists, who were unaware that the stream had even been abandoned.

someone has taken over the court's microsoft teams broadcast for the novak djokovic hearing and is displaying porn pic.twitter.com/v9ZP5WtzU3

— Zac Crellin (@zacrellin) January 9, 2022

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Sydney Morning Herald reporter Sarah Danckert claimed the court official tasked with moderating the broadcast left “after having trouble” trying to “mute” all the trolls who were spamming it with inappropriate content.

“We’ve had techno blasting, giggling, shouting and someone is just saying Nole repeatedly in a pained voice,” she reported.

we've all been muted but one guy has his camera on and looks confused, must not have heard the court official come back and say we're not using this link today… before the mute we had a lot of proclaimations from viewers "free the refugees", "free Nole", "this is bad for Aust"

— Sarah Danckert (@sdanck) January 9, 2022

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Though the broadcast was eventually up and running, continuous tech issues – likely due to the massive international interest in the case, which Australian authorities had seemingly not accounted for – plagued the stream and led to a temporary adjournment. International news outlets had their live coverage repeatedly derailed and readers were left out of the loop as to what was actually happening in court.

Read more

Djokovic’s hearing is taking place in the Melbourne Federal Circuit Court on Monday after he had been detained in a ‘quarantine hotel’ for refugees for five days.

The tennis star – who had traveled to Melbourne, Australia last week to compete at the Australian Open – had his visa canceled and was detained on January 5 for failing to provide proof of vaccination against Covid-19. Despite the fact that he had received an exemption to participate in the tournament, as recently recovered, it wasn’t enough for the Australian Border Force who are abiding by country’s strict vaccine-related entry rules.