Race Wars in the Australia Media

The topic of focus this week was race and gender wars in the Australian media landscape and for this post I am going to solely focus on race, in particular, the reporting of Aboriginal affairs.

According to Tanner and Richardson, 'one of the biggest challenges in the Australian media landscape is finding effective ways of reprsenting multicultural Australia' (2013 p. 254) and for me, only need to say the words "Aboriginal" before negative pictures and facts pop into my head.

To name a couple:

• Lower life expectancy;
• There is a large population of incarcerated Aborigines even though they make up a small percentage of the Australian population; and
• The last ten years have been a "wasted decade" for Indigenous Australians.

The apparent negative representation that continues to flood the media, frame and perpetuate damaging stereotype. Journalism is ‘the primary method of framing experience and forming public consciousness of the here and now (Adam in Tanner & Richardson 2013 p. 254), which is indicative of prevailing stereotypes remaining shallow below the surface. 

Thinking back to Bill Leak's cartoon of the Aboriginal Father from week 6's topic of freedom of speech and information, it's relevant to reiterate NSW Aboriginal Land Council Roy Ah-See comments regarding prevailing stereotypes. 

"This type of cartoon helps no-one, in actual fact it stokes the fire of racism and it plays into the stereotypical views of a lot of non-Aboriginal people out there think [that] Aboriginal people don't have a place in this society," he said.

Discussion in class stemmed from the idea that there needs to be a power relationship between journalists and Aboriginal people to enable voices to be heard in the mainstream media, which would be far more effective than segregating Aboriginal media to channels like NITV that aren't as popular with the wider audience. 

In an article on The Conversation site, Stoneham states 'encouraging journalists to talk with Aboriginal people about their life, culture and concerns may result in news stories that are more accurate and portray a less distorted and stereotypical view of Aboriginal communities' (2014) and in turn, would provide positive representation where prevailing stereotypes would find difficulty breaking the surface.

We need to quit adding fuel to the fire of racist attitudes in Australia and start building fair and equitable relationships between the Australian media, public and Aborigines sooner rather than later. 

Check out NITV's program First Contact here. It's a real eye-opener into the reality of the situation facing Aborigines today.

References

Tanner, Stephen; Richardson, Nick Journalism Research and Investigation in a Digital World, Oxford University Press, 2013