Part A – Journalism and the Indigenous polity

IN THE COURSE OF RESEARCHING OUR BOOK ON THE REPORTING AND reception of Indigenous issues in the Australian media, Alan McKee and I became keenly aware of a standard liberal approach to the subject of Aboriginal people, ethics and the media. It goes like this: you round up the ‘usual suspects’, which comprise hostile reporting, racial prejudice, the stereotyping of Aboriginal people, and their sacrifice at the altar of a good story (also known as a fast buck). You offer a quick critique of the corporate greed and insensitivity that drive the media. And you make a plea for ethical behaviour by individual journalists. Everyone then goes home, none the wiser.

Our own three-year study, which was supported by an Australian Research Council Large Grant, was an attempt to broaden the framework for thinking about the way Aboriginal affairs are reported in the media and how Indigenous people are represented both as media professionals and as subjects in the media. Where previous work in this field has concentrated on finding examples of racist and ‘negative’ coverage, we set out to put questions of media, racist and Indigenous representation into a larger context. In concrete terms, this meant studying a much broader range of media coverage than is normally included in research of this kind – we looked beyond news and current affairs reporting to entertainment and life-style media.