Yesterday, the ABC held its upfronts, a teaser of the year of programming to come. And predictably, the news and current affairs programs were like a sea of mayonnaise — with no shade to the Crabbs, Rowlands, Micallefs and Sales’ of this world who continue to dominate.
The overwhelming whiteness of the ABC’s flagship news programs caused a bit of a stir on Twitter. But ABC Communications’ response was to bunker down and post their way through it.
It started with a tweet about the “great diverse talent on the ABC”. That included shows like Chopsticks or Fork and Superwog. Not really hard-hitting news and current affairs. It was followed by four more in the next hour or so, showcasing the ABC’s diverse talent, and, rather hilariously, providing a link to a brief, frantically-written statement telling us how Aunty would Do Better.
And look, props to the ABC for at least taking the feedback on board. Of course, we could be picky and point out many of those non-white faces are on relatively new shows, or read the news on the channels nobody watches. When you look at the broadcaster’s most influential news programs and biggest stars, the whiteness really stands out. It only started putting non-white people on Insiders this year after a post-Black Lives Matter outcry.
And this all comes just a few months after Media Diversity Australia released a report which found just 6% of presenters, commentators and reporters on Australian television news have an Indigenous or non-European background (despite making up around a quarter of the population).
The ABC is supposed to do better — the charter says it must broadcast programs that reflect the cultural diversity of the Australian community.
And in their statement, they promised to do so. But real change requires sustained work, not firing off a few apologetic tweets every time you get called out.
Sure, let’s join News Corp and IPA in another round of cheap attacks on the ABC.
This is getting to be Crikey’s style, what with Bernard’s regular swipes at the News Channel.
Once enough ammunition is kindly provided, the government will feel brave enough to go on emasculating the ABC until it is just a lingering memory of something good we used to have … once upon a time.
In other words, Crikey, lay off! There is plenty of diversity to be seen and heard across everything ABC does.
(might be more useful querying the weird SBS prime time programming which, despite its loud noises about serving a diverse audience, seems to think its key ethnic group is nostalgic Poms yearning for yet another British railway journey or another mashup of Royals gossip masquerading as history.
SBS Movie channel can be interesting at times…except some AI bot has forgot to change the loop..
Accusing the ABC of lack of diversity because all or most of its news readers are white is a fair call but it seems to me that it is a pretty shallow criticism given the emphasis given to diversity of views on most shows the station broadcasts.
It is rare to see Qanda without a diverse panel and I haven’t seen the Drum without a diverse panel.
If 25% of the Oz population is ‘indigenous or non-European’, that leaves around 75% who are white…of European or other origin. It stands to reason that the vast majority of the news team…on any TV channel…will represent the majority of the population.
What’s wrong with that???
Indigenous folk want to be seen on every show going, when they are only around 3% of the population.
What’s democratic about that???
However, I am more than happy for these groups to be represented in the media, so long as their numbers are in proportion to their overall population totals. Otherwise you have the problem of one small group trying to present their views as ‘mainstream’ when that will almost certainly NOT be the case.
The ABC ‘mainstream’, going by it’s workforce makeup, seems to be dominantly private schooled ‘mainstream’. I don’t know how representative that is of other ‘mainstream’ Australia. Could be one for ‘class’ analysis ?..It’s a tricky one to get your head around, in a ‘classless’ middleclass mainstream Australia. 🙂
Damned if they do, damned if they don’t and to be fair the ‘diversity’ on the ABC reflects the majority of influencers and voters in Australia, peak influence for now.
However, such lack of diversity precludes any lived experience or insight into the ‘other’, let alone other parts of the world.
The Drum often suffers from panel packing e.g. IPA or LNP PR types vs. diversity amongst women or minorities; seems set up to aggravate and confirm in the minds of many nativist conservatives that NewsCorp and LNP are right about the ABC being biased….
Hopefully there will be more diversity in our media, not just the ABC, when more NESB citizens come to occupy more peak working age positions and status in Australian society.
Remember, Australia has had several decades of dog whistling of NESBS, refugees and immigrants that inversely promotes Anglo Irish (especially Christian conservative) culture as both superior and ‘Australian’.