Aboriginal Media Portrayals
Indigenous roles and stereotypes in the Australian media a source of entrenched racism
Feb 13, 2007
The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody asserted that negative media portrayals of Indigenous people and issues were a major cause of racism in Australia, and recommended that journalists be trained in cross-cultural awareness.
This confirmed the findings of the National Inquiry into Racist Violence in Australia in 1990. The Inquiry found that most Aboriginal people believed the media to be a major instrument for perpetuating dominant cultural racism and misunderstandings of Aboriginal cultures and ways of living.
The Inquiry highlighted Aboriginal concerns that the coverage of events and issues involving Aboriginal people were almost always portrayed negatively, depicting Aborigines as either a threat to society or as victims of society.
The Inquiry found that this systematic misrepresentation indeed influenced the dominant culture in Australia to view Indigenous peoples in a negative light, and was a major cause of the racism and discrimination experienced daily by Aboriginal people across the nation.
In the Australian media, the Aboriginality of offenders tends to be made known unnecessarily in reports about violent crimes. Social problems like these are treated in such a way that they leave viewers with the impression that they are caused by something innate within Aboriginal people, rather than by colonial impositions. These ideas are always presented as "common sense", and fail to address social or historical contexts, encouraging the wider community to adopt a shallow and bigoted view of Indigenous issues.
