Does the media fail Aboriginal political aspirations: 45 years of news media reporting of key political moments

(Paperback)

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For too long Australia's media has failed to communicate Aboriginal political aspirations. This unique study of key Aboriginal initiatives seeking self-determination and justice reveals a history of media procrastination and denial.

A team of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal researchers examine 45 years of media responses to these initiatives, from the 1972 Larrakia petition to the Queen seeking land rights and treaties, to the desire for recognition expressed in the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart. This analysis exposes how the media frames stories, develops discourses, and supports deeper historical narratives that corrode and undermine the intent and urgency of Aboriginal aspirations, through approaches ranging from sympathetic stalling to patronising parodies.

This book can be used by media professionals to improve their practices, by Aboriginal communities to test media truth-telling and by anyone seeking to understand how Aboriginal desires and hopes have been expressed, and represented, in recent Australian political history.

Reviews

"No matter what I say, I can't do credit to the brave attempt this book has made to chart a very complex set of issues that have helped shape and often distort our history." --Kerry O'Brien, veteran journalist, ABC TV

Author Bio

Amy Thomas is an academic in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney, where she was also a 2018 Shopfront Community Research Fellow. Her PhD research focuses on ideas of self-determination and assimilation in Indigenous bilingual schooling. For an essay on this topic, she won the Northern Territory Literary Award in 2018. She has published in academic and popular press, including Sexualities, History Australia, Crikey, Overland Literary Journal, The Lifted Brow and New Matilda. Along with her colleagues she was awarded the UTS Vice-Chancellors learning futures award for team teaching in 2018. Andrew Jakubowicz is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Technology Sydney and worked as a consultant researcher on this report. Since the early 1970s he has been involved in action research and race relations, and has been centrally involved in the development of materialist theories of cultural diversity. He has published widely on ethnic diversity issues, disability and media studies in the academic and popular press, and has published numerous books, including the cowritten Racism, ethnicity and the media in 1994 and For those whove come across the seas: Australian multicultural theory. Dr Heidi Norman is a Senior lecturer in the Communications Program in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) at the university of Technology, Sydney. Her research focuses on NSW Aboriginal history and politics with particular emphasis on the modernising effects of rule, shared history and the challenges of Aboriginal adjustment to modernity. She teaches in the areas of applied research and Australian history and politics. She is a descendant of the Gomeroi people of north-western NSW.