CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
A recent study by SBS analysed 1,366 media articles in a 6-month period, examining the sentiment towards minority communities in them. Over a third of hard news stories contained negative sentiments towards minority communities, while more than half of the editorials and commentary pieces portrayed minority communities in a negative light.
Those who are capable of basic mathematics would be able to diagnose this issue as one rooted in a lack of non-tokenistic cultural diversity in media hiring.
While terrified media commentators who are increasingly nervous about how irrelevant they are would argue that diversity is nothing but a radical left-wing theory aimed at breaking up the glorious fruits of nepotism by presenting Australia as a country that is is somewhat multicultural, the ABS can confirm that 26% of Australians were born overseas, and over 49% have a parent born overseas.
Only 1 in 4 Australians are Australian born to Australian born parents – and of them – 24% are Indigenous.
When taken into account these numbers, it is very noticeable that Australian media has been unable need to accurately represent the community in their hiring processes.
While it is no surprise that the pre-internet boomers running commercial news publications and TV networks have no interest in curating Australian newsrooms that look a little bit more like Australian classrooms – the lack of diversity in the ABC is harder to explain. This is mainly due to their modus operandi of holding both the government and the business sector accountable in ways that mainstream panderers are restricted from by their white supremacist owners who still wish Tony Abbott was Prime Minister.
Some have argued in the past that the public broadcaster’s poor track record in actively hiring non-white-non-private-school-educated-non-inner-city-yuppies is a direct result of the Sydney light rail that was built under a NSW Labor government with the sole purpose of delivering white people from the gentrified streets of Balmain to their places of employment in Ultimo, home of the ABC head office. More commonly referred to as the Kremlin.
However, public broadcaster employees claim that the suggestion that there is a distinct lack of diversity in their 5000-person HQ is a myth, and that there used to be a Filipino woman working in the ABC Store. Before they shut it down in the latest restructure.
Not to mention the new unpaid intern fetching coffees for the Radio National team, who apparently has a splash of Mediterranean in her.
“Yeah, my grandma came from Malta” says the 19-year-old Sydney Uni communications graduate, Bridie – who has single-handedly broken the glass ceiling of white supremacy on Harris street.
“Or should I say my Nunna”
After successfully defending the public servants that she plans on working alongside with full government perks and five weeks of annual holidays for the next 50 years, Bridie takes a deep breath and gets to work.
“Anyway, do you have a minute to chat?” she asks this 55-year-old rural reporter.
“I’ve been told to write up a 1000-word thinkpiece on the Sydney lock-out laws. Have they affected your life directly?”
“How do you think they will affect the culture of nightclubbing in the future?”
