Throughout the semester, various events and ideologies have been explored and discussed in class. The week that is chosen and will be discussed in this essay is the topic on ‘Media’ (Week 6), where the misrepresentation, stereotypes and images from media are analysed and illustrate the implications the Indigenous community had to go through. Through the understanding of various ideologies, such as ‘Peace Journalism’, as well as gaining knowledge and observing from different perspective (from an Indigenous perspective), the learning experience surrounding media will be discussed.
The media has portrayed a bias and misrepresented impression of the Indigenous community. This wrong portraying is particularly evident in Australian news media, such as the Australian and Sydney Morning Herald, where the Indigenous community are portrayed to be dark-skin coloured and of a lower socioeconomic class, even though it is not true. According to Bullimore, the Australian news media lacks in Indigenous voices or Indigenous voices were outnumbered by non-Indigenous voices in their news reporting (Bullimore, 1999). As of today, the Indigenous population is highly dominated by the non-Indigenous population, as there are only 3% of the Australian population identifying themselves as Indigenous (Creative Spirit, 2014). This creates an uneven ratio between non-Indigenous voices and Indigenous voices in news reports, as they would tend to be more bias and favourited towards non-Indigenous voices. This misrepresentation of the Indigenous community allowed me to see a new perspective, allowing me to see beyond the ‘facts’ presented and question the authenticity of where they are coming from, as well as the perspectives they were written from. Since 1972, the ideology of ‘Peace Journalism’ has been continuously developing, in an article that was published in 2011, it encourages voices of both the racial background that are being written and those that are involved in the articles (Mcmahon, 2011). This development is intended to help achieve a fairer position for both races and to assist with the matter of ‘cold conflict’, the conflict between two races (Mcmahon, 2011). Media is still pivotal to the transmission of information, but I believe it would require a renewed management system that incorporates ‘Peace Journalism’ into it’s daily reports. Without media and with the ever-growing advancement of modern technology, the spreading of information may be even worse as there could be very outrageous claims with a lack of authenticity. This could be particularly problematic for the Indigenous community as gullible audiences would believe any information that is fed to them, creating a very disadvantageous and hostile environment for the minority.
The main key issue with media is the stereotypes that are portrayed, a stereotype is a standardised assumption based on a first impression. These stereotypical misrepresentations can be dangerous and harmful to the Indigenous community, as it can lead to acts of racism, such as verbal or physical abuse. When the term Indigenous is mentioned in media reporting, they are usually revolved around the following terminologies ‘dark-skinned’, ‘alcoholic’, ‘violent’, or ‘low-level educated’ (Creative Spirit, 2014), leaving a stereotyped impression of the Indigenous community to the mass media. This understanding is shocking and surprising as I had realised the power of the media after looking at the news reports from another perspective, the Indigenous Community’s perspective. The news reports cover the truth and make them appear to be the “truth”, even though they are not, by consistently and continuously enforcing the same stereotypical reports to the general public. These stereotypes are formed by the images and stereotypical reports produced by the mass media. Images are a powerful instrument in representing what a photographer wants to convey. As said by Frederick R. Barnard, “A picture is worth a thousand words”, depicting the multiplicity of inferences possible from an image (Gary Martin, 2014). These inferences were discussed in a class activity, where various images were displayed and students were asked to infer from the images. One overlaying aspect was the sense of identity in these images, as it was commonly divided into fair and non-fair people, defined by their skin colour, hair colour, or language group. These images used in media consists of the Indigenous community in low socio economic work roles (Pattel, 2007), establishing and enforcing that misrepresentative identity. This identity should not be imposed, as “one’s [identity] is not determined by a single gene or gene cluster” (World Mysteries, 2011). I believe that Indigenous Identity should not be judged by their skin colour, language, or how they were presented by the media. Their identity is who they believe they are, whether they are ‘dark-skinned’ and isn’t Indigenous or ‘fair-skinned’ and is Indigenous. Therefore, after this lesson, the reliability of description that are put with images and news articles are now being questioned.
The sense of identity created by media misrepresentations and stereotypes causes enormous problems, such as unfair treatment in education, job opportunities and physical or mental abuse. The Indigenous and non-Indigenous lifestyle and culture are very different and would be very difficult to unify them into a single society. However, assimilation of Indigenous to non-Indigenous society was being forced by government policies, such as the Education policy. This was particularly evident in the lecture with guest speakers (Week 2), detailing the horrific experiencing they had encountered. This experience should never have to happen to any individual as it is extremely traumatising and immoral. Even travelling to school usually is time consuming, encountering horrible acts of racism by the “White children”, making education a lesser priority and less appealing in attending school. The lack of identity, as well as forced assimilation (long commute to school), discouraged them from education, providing support for the misrepresentative Indigenous stereotype. Hence, I believe that is why there has been a lack of involvement of Indigenous voice in the society. Indigenous people mostly live in remote areas with limited access to technology, even if there is Internet connectivity, there may be no power to run the computer (Australian Indigenous Health Info Net, 2013). That means it is very hard to use technology to bring awareness to the media and gain support, as it is primarily non-Indigenous voices. Even if Indigenous want to work in the media industry and bring awareness to the unfair situation, the required job opportunities as non-Indigenous people but not provided to the Indigenous people. This is primarily because of the stereotypes associated to the Indigenous community, which essentially acts as a loop, they were disadvantaged from the same job opportunities as non-Indigenous people.
Media has imposed a biased and incorrect impression of the Indigenous community to the general public. Misrepresentation via stereotypes and images were used to portrayed them in stereotypical situations, such as ‘dark-skinned’, ‘alcoholic’, ‘violent’, or ‘low-level educated’. I believe that this is primarily due to the lack of Indigenous voices that the media has purposefully disregarded. The media sector should have more involvement by Indigenous voices as it should be their responsibility to incorporate all voices in the discussion. This would help prevent ‘cold conflict’, minimising the harshness of media content and present honest and truthful news reports that reflect information from both perspectives. The Indigenous community is greatly affected from these media misrepresentations and would be affected negatively, such as emotional or physical trauma. Ultimately, I believe that Indigenous Identity should not be judged by their skin colour, language, or how they were presented by the media. Their identity is who they believe they are, whether they are ‘dark-skinned’ and isn’t Indigenous or ‘fair-skinned’ and is Indigenous. The main knowledge learnt from this topic would be the ability to critically analyse a situation, determining the quality, authenticity and reliability of the information presented. This would be beneficial for future endeavours as it would open up a new perspective whenever information is given. Additionally, from this unit, various common misconceptions were learnt, such as, Indigenous people being ‘fair’ and the horrific experiences in their past. I believe in the future, media should be more responsible for their actions, after the information being released and the effects the causes to those affected.
