Portrayals of Indigenous Australians in The News Media
One 2006 study found that no newspaper managers interviewed believed their papers were racist, but most Aboriginal interviewees believed that mainstream newspapers "failed Aborigines dismally". The same survey found that no major paper had any Indigenous Australians as editors, and that only editors specializing in Indigenous issues had any significant knowledge of Indigenous cultures. Most editors also said that they saw their readership as white, and some conceded that this perception affected their news coverage. In 1992, a systematic survey of mainstream media, including television, news, and radio, found that "the exclusion of (non-stereotyped) diversity is almost total in all the media studied."
In issues specifically relating to Indigenous Australians, Indigenous voices are still dwarfed by non-Indigenous voices in press coverage. One study of the Sydney Morning Herald's coverage of Wik and native title found that only one quarter of relevant articles contained any Indigenous voices.
A 1992 study of several media found that the only highly-reported issues relating to multiculturalism (including but not limited to Indigenous issues) were immigration and Indigenous land rights, both of which were presented as "problems for the majority culture." One author has explained that Mabo coverage was so in-depth because Mabo "reached far into the heart of non-Aboriginal Australia." The way in which Mabo was covered also reflected papers' presumed white readership: according to Dunbar, most stories were directed at white audiences, with a clear sense of conflict between "us" and "them." When Mabo was mentioned on the front page, it was almost always portrayed as a potential threat to the population as a whole, as opposed to belated justice for Indigenous Australians. This pattern was also seen in news coverage of a community funeral in Woorabinda that was used as an opportunity to arrest fifty Indigenous people on outstanding fine warrants. The Indigenous community was outraged, but the local paper reported the arrests without any mention of their happening at a funeral. The paper's chief of staff explained this way: "We decided there is a perception that the majority of readers don't really care what happened out there. There was a blowout over the fact it happened at a funeral and we did not embroil ourselves in the shit fight that blacks hate police and police hate blacks. It would not have achieved anything. We had to make a conscious decision based on our circulation; we had nothing to gain circulation-wise by continuing the fight for days and days."
Read more about this topic: Media Portrayals Of Indigenous Australians
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