WHO GETS TO TELL AUSTRALIAN STORIES
Australian audiences are let down by TV networks’ lack of diversity.
Australian TV news and current affairs is failing the audiences it’s supposed to serve, and the worst offender is Channel 9.
Channel 9 is the worst offender in a newly released report which reveals the embarrassing chasm between the multicultural make-up of Australians, and the on-air journalists, presenters and commentators featured in local news and current affairs programming.
Only 11.4 per cent of on-air talent in news and current affairs come from a non-Anglo-Celtic and non-European background despite those minority groups representing 24 per cent of the wider Australian population.
Which means for every Waleed Aly, there are nine Karl Stefanovics.
That number is much more damning when you break it down by TV networks with Channel 9 performing the worst with only 3 per cent of its on-air talent coming from a culturally diverse background.
Channel 7 was marginally better at 4.8 per cent while the third commercial network, Channel 10, had 8.6 per cent.
The ABC sat on 14.1 per cent while SBS, whose charter dictates its principal function is to serve multicultural communities (but whose NITV channel was not included in the report), recorded 76.8 per cent of its on-air talent as non-Anglo-Celtic and non-European. SBS’s 76.8 per cent significantly boosted the overall average.
In regional newsrooms, including the likes of Southern Cross ACT, Seven Tasmania and Win Hobart, the presence of culturally diverse on-air news talent was almost non-existent, only 0.4 per cent.
“Today’s multicultural Australia is still served by a media that resembles the country you had during the White Australia policy,” Tim Soutphommasane, Professor of Practice (Sociology and Political Theory) at the University of Sydney and a former Race Discrimination Commissioner, told news.com.au.
“Who we see on screens shapes how we understand Australian society and identity. If there are backgrounds that aren’t adequately represented, the message is clear: people from those backgrounds may not really belong to Australia, or really count as Australian.”
he report, “Who Gets to Tell Australian Stories?” was released by non-profit group Media Diversity Australia and researched and written by academics across several universities including Deakin, University of Sydney, Western Sydney University and Macquarie University, with the support of Google and the MEAA.
The data was gathered from a two-week slice of free-to-air news and current affairs programming from June 1 to June 14, 2019, encompassing 270 on-air reporters, presenters and commentators across 81 programs and more than 35,000 appearances.
The programs included nightly news bulletins, current affairs shows such as The Drum, The Project and 60 Minutes, and high-profile breakfast TV such as Today and Sunrise.
By the number of appearances made by culturally diverse on-air talent, the overall percentage reduces to only 5.9 per cent.
In comparison, Australia lags significantly behind the UK where its main TV broadcasters reported having 10 to 20 per cent of its employees as coming from minority backgrounds.
MFA Who Gets To Tell Australian Stories Report
Read More: News.com.au Aug 2020 or Croakey Aug 2020
