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Abstract

Over the past decades, truth-telling commissions aimed at uncovering, confronting and providing justice for the past treatment of children have been established in many countries, including the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (RCIRCSA 2013-2017) and the Norwegian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) (2018-2023). Journalism plays important roles both in triggering commissions of inquiry and in attracting public attention to their work and findings. This paper investigates media reporting on the RCIRCSA and the TRC. The Commissions were not similar in scale, scope or legal powers, however, they both generated spaces for public listening to stories about the consequences of past policies and present practices of child removal, abuse and racism that potentially could change the grand narratives of each nation. Our findings suggest that future commissions should pay particular attention to the structural power of news logics and mediation. We find, despite the widely different cases, consistent patterns of uneven and hierarchical media reporting and overshadowing of First Nations voices and aspirations.

Keywords

Australia First Nations Norway RCIRCSA TRC truth-telling commissions

Introduction

Journalism on Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) and Royal Commissions (RCs) play important roles both in triggering commissions of inquiry and in attracting public attention to their work and findings (Andrews, 2003; Waller et al., 2020). News reporting can break taboos and bring previously hidden practices into the public domain. Within the institutional space of a national inquiry, journalists and news media organisations therefore have a responsibility to seek out, listen to and amplify the voices of the previously silenced. Truth-finding commissions are set up to inquire into the history and uncover the untold stories of the often painful past (McCallum and Waller, 2021). As a bespoke organisation established by political authorities but independent of government, a national commission of inquiry is able to establish its own communication approach and functions (Prasser, 2021). Reporting on truth-seeking commissions represents unique opportunities to expose crimes and injustices, enable marginalised voices to be heard, and make recommendations for redress where systems have failed.

Over the past decades, commissions of inquiry or truth-telling commissions (Tjandra, 2022) aimed at uncovering, confronting and providing justice for past injustices have been set up in many countries, for example, Canada (2008–2015) and Northern Ireland (2024–). In this article, we look at two examples of commissions set up in established democracies, the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (RCIRCSA 2013–2017) and the Norwegian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) (2018–2023). While these two inquiries diverged in terms of scope and the amount of media attention they generated, both were crucial in terms of bearing witness to past injustice on behalf of the nation and bringing the issues to global attention. By comparing and juxtaposing how they were reported, this study contributes to better understanding national responses to, and global resonances of, commissions of inquiry.

We join insights from two projects on the mediation of truth-telling commissions in two different countries. Together they shed light on how journalism and media attention play into public discourses and public listening processes concerning past injustices and restorative justice. We are particularly interested in the mediation of commissions of inquiry by journalists and the news media. Our previous work has explored how national inquiries make individual stories and experiences public through media reporting and social media (McCallum et al., 2024). Media are enabled or hindered in their reporting by the organisational features of national inquiries, to reveal previously hidden stories, raise public awareness and raise issues on the public agenda (O’Connell, 2021). The way an inquiry is constituted from the outset can shape how, and to what extent the public shares in the act of bearing witness to past injustices (Broderstad and Josefsen, 2023; Stanton, 2011, 2022). The two cases we study here illustrate this.

Norway and Australia are different in many aspects, but they share some important characteristics: they are liberal democracies and established welfare states that have strong public service media and a dissimilar but comparatively decentralised press (Bennett et al., 2023). Both states have colonial histories of dispossession of Indigenous peoples and are challenged by First Nations sovereignty and claims to self-determination, often focused on ending colonial practices (Dankertsen, 2022).

Australia is a settler colony founded on the premise of ‘terra nullius’, that the land was empty, and the received understanding was that the First Nations peoples of the land were a ‘dying race’. Following devastating frontier wars came systematic dispossession and genocidal policies to clear land for British settlers and eradicate Australia’s Indigenous past. Norway has a colonial history that involves settler colonisation and dispossession of Indigenous lands. Both states have a history of repressive and assimilationist policies towards Indigenous peoples as well as histories of public institutions in which child removal, child abuse, oppression and repression have been widespread. Both countries have systems for setting up public commissions of inquiry to address and reconcile with their pasts, however, as this study will illustrate, the commissions vary substantially when it comes to mandates, powers, public presence and media attention.

Child removal from families and Indigenous communities either by force, by means of boarding schools or by social care, is a particular trait of colonial practices found globally, including in the two countries we use as cases here. In Australia’s case the policies of settler colonialism endure, with rates of First Nations child removal higher than during periods of forced removal (SNAICC – National Voice for Our Children, 2023). In Norway, colonisation and dispossession of Indigenous lands as well as the consequences and effects of long-term assimilation, such as loss of language, cultural connections and silence about the state’s racist policies have continued to the present day (Sannhets-og forsoningskommisjonen, 2023).

The approach taken here is qualitative and comparative in the sense that we juxtapose the findings from Norway and Australia in relation to two recent national inquiries. To that end, the study is guided by the following, intentionally open and wide, research questions:

What characterises journalism and media coverage of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2013–2017) in Australia and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Norway (2018–2023)?

How did the communication of each inquiry amplify or silence the voices and experiences of First Nations peoples?

What insights on the reporting on truth-telling commissions can be drawn from these two cases?

The study uses a range of theoretical frameworks to explore the cultural, organisational and media-related factors that have shaped the way publics in Norway and Australia have come to know these important national investigations into their pasts. It draws on theories of grand narratives (Andrews, 2003), public listening, silence (Dreher and De Souza, 2018; Dreher and Waller, 2021), the logics of news production (Harcup and O’Neill, 2017) and how media hierarchies of attention amplify some actors and perspectives at the expense of others (McCallum et al., 2020). The study adds to the literature on truth-telling commissions and the critical roles that journalism and news media play in these processes. It explains the interplay of cultural, organisational and media conditions that contribute to a consistent and entrenched pattern whereby news values and media logics function to overshadow colonial injustice not only in the past but also into the present (Wolfe, 2006).

Literature review and theoretical framework

The TRC and RCIRCSA can be viewed as grand narratives, where what stories are told, which ones are listened to, and which ones shape the narratives are important. Historian Molly Andrews et al. (2023: 45) has articulated how through a ‘communal activity of telling and listening to stories of one another’ truth commissions enable individual stories to become a nation’s collective memory. Media reporting of inquiries reinforces collective memories of the past or tells a story of a nation rent by conflict (Andrews et al., 2023). It can report back to the community the boundaries of who belongs and who is left out, what is legitimate to speak about and what is not part of the national discourse (Andrews et al., 2015). Yet, national inquiries through their political contexts, aims and organisational structures, may also be regarded as selective in the stories they tell (Hayner, 2011).

The narratives that truth commissions facilitate also set the conditions for public listening. Public listening theory turns attention and responsibility from the speaker to the listener (Dreher, 2017). Listening can be a route to justice as it shifts the focus from access and voice for oppressed or marginalised voices – to the listening practices and responsibilities of the relatively more privileged and powerful. In the first instance this pertains to inquiries and the way they are established and operate to actively listen to the stories of the voiceless. Media sociologist Charles Husband has long argued for a ‘Right to be Understood’ (1996, 2000) to complement the (assumed) right to communicate in a ‘multi-ethnic public sphere’.

Studies of silence point to the long-term consequences of discrimination, assimilation policies and racism against social and ethnic minority communities (Archetti, 2022; Jensen, 2019; Kovach, 2021). It is normatively understood that ‘speaking out’ is not only a privilege but a right and that silencing the voices of Indigenous and ethnic minorities, including vulnerable children has long been a tool of domination by the coloniser. The act of ‘making public’ (McCallum et al., 2024) to previously silenced voices and stories is a key tenet of national inquiries. News reporting is essential in this respect as it may break silences and shed light on individual and collective stories and experiences long neglected. As indicated above, within the institutional space of a national inquiry, news reporting and journalism have the potential of seeking out and amplifying voices and stories previously silenced (Stanton, 2011).

Following the argument above, the role of journalism can be instrumental in enhancing public attention to the truth commission’s findings and facilitate social dialogue (Laplante and Phenicie, 2010). Wasserman (2013) and Costera Meijer (2013) shift the emphasis away from the conventional focus on journalism’s ‘watchdog’ role and on to the ethics and practices that can catalyse political listening. O’Donnell (2009) highlights the potential for journalism to ‘help . . . people to listen and to hear unfamiliar voices, break silences, and establish meaningful dialogue across difference and disparity’ (p. 503). Wasserman (2013) argues that an ethic of listening can shift the orientation of journalists, ‘from gatekeepers to gate openers’ and from detachment to proactive amplification of unheard voices and facilitating politics ‘from the ground up’ (2013, p. 80).

However, the long and strong tradition of studies of the logics of news production (Harcup and O’Neill, 2017) suggest that negativity, for example scandals, and a focus on celebrity, routinely capture news attention at the expense of more arcane policy and procedural issues. Foundational and contemporary literature on news values (Galtung and Ruge, 1965; Harcup and O’Neill, 2017) explains why the news practices of news journalists and editors privilege stories about the already powerful, where the nation is assumed to be coherent and the marginalised a source of conflict and disruption. News agendas are focused on a narrow range of stories that are assumed to be of interest to the audiences that are to various degrees limited by markets, nationalities, localities or language. Issues concerning marginalised social groups and ethnic minorities, which are at the core of truth commissions mandates, are regularly marginalised in mainstream, nationwide media (Carilli 2021). This can potentially distort public awareness and understanding of the inquiries’ activities and findings. Previously, we have identified a structure of media hierarchies of attention where even in the face of best practice, marginalised groups and voices tend to be systematically overlooked and overshadowed (Waller et al. 2020).

Finally, literature on information subsidies and agenda-building suggest that the media and communication strategies of the commissions – in their roles as sources – matter for their abilities to set and influence the agendas of the news media. Timing, interaction with journalists and media, production of press releases and press conferences are instrumental in attracting media attention to the commissions’ work and findings (Boumans, 2018; Kiousis et al., 2015). Broderstad and Josefsen (2023) highlight this point in their analysis of the mode of operation of the Norwegian TRC. Drawing on a substantial literature (De Costa, 2017; Stanton, 2011, 2022) emphasising that truth commissions must engage with the public to inform and educate the public as their work proceed, Broderstad and Josefsen (2023) argue that the Norwegian TRC chose quite another strategy. Even though the TRC participated in open local meetings where the commission met with and listened to witnesses and organisations, the TRC’s members did not engage in a social dialogue or share their findings. The main work mode was closed meetings where the media had no access, and in terms of agenda-building, very little production of information subsidies that would attract media attention.

Approach and methods

The empirical data were collected by two projects on the two different commissions of inquiry. For this study, we regard the two commissions as different cases that serve to illustrate, explore and understand the complexities involved in the mediation and mediatisation of commissions of inquiries. Since the cases and the contexts they are situated in are quite different, we do not argue that we have conducted a systematic comparison, rather the two commissions are treated as juxtapositions ‘that allow us to learn from contexts which are related yet distinct’ (Fjellheim, 2023). By juxtaposing findings from two different contexts, we may, as suggested by Hooker (2017) learn from experiences but avoid the strict prior assumptions tied to a comparative analysis.

The data were collected and analysed by the two projects, Breaking Silences: Media and the Child Abuse Royal Commission in Australia and The Silent Voices in Norway. Each of them used several data sources and methods, including qualitative interviews, qualitative and in-depth analyses of journalism and media content as well as document analyses. For the purpose of this article, we outline findings concerning the two commissions’ communication strategies and practices for investigating and communicating their work to the public, including journalism. In the analysis we look at three dimensions: first, the historical, cultural and policy contexts that the commissions were part of; second, the conditions for public listening; and third, the media coverage of the commissions.

The Australian project was a predominantly non-Indigenous team of media studies researchers, working with victims and survivors of child sexual abuse, Indigenous, disability and regional communities. An Aboriginal co-researcher who had been an employee of the Royal Commission was employed on this part of the project. While the Commission’s primary aim had been to understand child sexual abuse in all institutional contexts, the researchers were particularly attuned to the role of media and communication in giving voice or silencing the intersectionality of child sexual abuse and Indigeneity in the context of Australia’s colonial past, and the way that child sexual abuse had been weaponised against the community. Methods included analysis of media coverage of the Commission (Waller et al., 2020; Hess and McCallum, 2023), document analysis of the final report, and interviews with Commission staff and journalists (McCallum et al., 2023). In this article we draw on the findings from the archival, media and interview analysis as the basis for comparison with the Norwegian TRC.

The objective of the Norwegian project, which was conducted by non-Indigenous researchers, was to study news media reporting on the TRC. The TRC had the mandate to investigate the history and consequences of official Norwegian policies of colonisation and assimilation, and thereby to (re-)establish knowledge on the common history of Norwegian citizens, majority and minorities. The project included quantitative analyses of news reporting on the TRC, background material and interviews. The project was designed to study how the TRC communicated with its audiences and how the communication strategy of the commission interacted with news logics and journalism.

Findings

Both projects find that news logics prevailed in the reporting on the truth-telling commissions. Attention is drawn to scandals and celebrity actors rather than to long-term investigative processes and marginalised groups. In both Australia and Norway, we see recurring patterns of influential mainstream coverage that perpetuate the marginalisation of voices and issues concerning Indigenous peoples and minorities. These patterns cannot be explained by the norms and practices of journalism alone, and we discuss two themes that emerged from our comparative analysis. First, that the history, culture and policy of each country in relation to its treatment of Indigenous peoples at large and Indigenous children in particular is central to both how the commissions were established, operated and reported upon in public media. Second, that the organisational structures and practices of each commission shaped its interaction with news media, the type of coverage and public understanding.

Historical, cultural and policy factors

Australia: Barely registering on the Australian public agenda prior to the 2000s, survivor advocates and investigative journalists worked together to raise the issue of child sexual abuse and establish the narrative that this was not an individual but an institutional issue. Child sexual abuse was, and remains, a brutal legacy of Australia’s past that is frequently weaponised by mainstream media against First Nations communities. Assimilationist policies of child removal known as the ‘Stolen Generations’, not only have lasting impacts but are continued through current and ongoing disproportionate rates of child removal, disadvantage and racial discrimination (RCRICSA, 2017; SNAICC – National Voice for Our Children, 2023). Of the 17,000 survivors who testified to the RCIRCSA, 6875 of which were heard in private sessions, more than 14% identified as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (RCRICSA, 2017: 4). Of those, three quarters said they were abused in out-of-home care, the majority in a historical residential institution such as a children’s home or mission dormitory. The RCIRCSA found that the long-term, intergenerational impacts of colonisation, ongoing legacies of removal policies and practices, and the Stolen Generations, all increase Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children’s vulnerability to sexual abuse in institutional contexts. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children continue to be significantly overrepresented in out-of-home care and youth detention, exposing them to environments with greater risk.

Norway: Although the Sámi are the Indigenous people in the Nordic countries, and Sápmi, their homelands, spans the mid- and northern parts of four countries, from west to east: Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, knowledge in the Norwegian population is consistently low, a major problem noted in the TRC’s final report (Sannhets-og forsoningskommisjonen, 2023). The same is true for the two national minorities included in the TRC’s mandate, the Kvens and the Norwegian Finns. The TRC investigated Norwegian history only, but similar processes are documented in Sweden and Finland, too (Lantto, 2010; Lehtola, 2004, 2015; Mörkenstam, 1999). Separate TRCs for Sámi and other ethnic and cultural minorities subject to assimilation policies were set up in Sweden (2020 and 2022) and Finland (2021). The colonisation of Sápmi took place over several centuries and in different forms. From 1850 onwards, in Norway, policies intended to assimilate – ‘Norwegianise’ – the Sámi and other minorities – were reinforced. As in Australia, Sámi lands were regarded as terra nullius and taken over by settlers, sometimes violently, or the state just declaring the land empty or owned by the crown. The Sámi were described as a degenerate and dying race by leading scientists and subjected to discrimination and racist measures (Kyllingstad, 2014). Norwegianisation as a strategy was consolidated and systematised after 1900. The TRC documents the historical processes of discrimination, abuse and racism, and extensive removal of First Nations children to boarding schools where they also were exposed to violence, trauma and abuse. The TRC’s report further concludes that the long-term consequences of Norwegianisation are still in process. The discriminatory measures were removed decades ago, but land-grabbing, language loss and racism continue (Sannhets-og forsoningskommisjonen, 2023), as on-going conflicts and court cases also show.

Public listening

Close analysis of the organisational structure and strategic communication approach of each commission of inquiry shows each had different form and mandates, and that this significantly affected their media prominence and community awareness.

Australia: The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2013–2017) was the longest, most complex, expensive, widely discussed and arguably most successful commission of inquiry in Australia’s history. Established by the Gillard Labor government, the inquiry set out to: ‘inquire into institutional responses to allegations and incidents of child sexual abuse and related matters’.¹ The RCIRCSA was a major national event from the outset, costing $500 million AUD² and running over 5 years. The public nature of the Commission was signalled through its Letter’s Patent that required the RCIRCSA ‘through private sessions and public hearings, to bear witness to the abuse and trauma inflicted on children who suffered sexual abuse in an institutional context’. As such, it was a unique opportunity to expose crimes and injustices, enable marginalised voices to be heard, and make recommendations for redress where systems had failed.

As the highest form of inquiry in the Australian system, the RCIRCSA had coercive power to summon witnesses and refer suspects to criminal justice authorities. Furthermore, it engaged in an extensive programme of research and policy and held approximately 8000 private sessions with witnesses to understand the nature and extent of abuse in institutions. The Commission made 409 recommendations that were accepted by government and resulted in a national apology in November 2018.

The RCIRCSA can be understood as an exemplary case of ‘institutional listening’ (Scudder et al., 2021). The Commission’s work was structured around three ‘pillars’ designed to meet its aims of listening to the voices of child sexual abuse. The first pillar was the public hearings, structured around 57 ‘cases’ which were the public face of the inquiry. The Commission’s other ‘pillars’ were its private sessions and its policy and research arms. The six Commissioners met and heard the stories of 8000 survivors, facilitated by an extensive engagement process that sought out survivors from institutions such as First Nations, disabilities, prison and closed religious communities. In the context of this paper, this pillar of the Commission is significant. Much of the Commission’s work was done privately and this deep work was not made public or shared with journalists. The third ‘pillar’ included research and academic reports, and 25 policy round tables with key stakeholders. Three interim reports with recommendations were released during the life of the Commission, meaning that its activities and findings were kept alive throughout its operations.

The Royal Commission recognised from the outset that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children ‘are significantly over-represented in some high-risk institutional contexts due to a range of historical, social and economic factors, including colonization’. Significantly, it also found that this is a contemporary experience. The RCIRCSA dedicated considerable resources to making sure that First Nations communities were engaged and that those who wanted to share their stories in a private session felt culturally safe and supported to do so. The Commission’s emphasis on the importance and urgency of addressing the impacts of ongoing colonial relations and processes, including the over-representation of Indigenous children in both the out-of-home care and juvenile justice systems, aligns with longstanding First Nations media and political agendas.

Norway: The proposals for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for the Sámi was first launched by the Sámi Parliament but the Norwegian Government was not positive to a truth-telling commission. Still, the issue was lifted to the Norwegian parliament by the Left Socialist Party in 2017 (Hernes, 2023). During parliamentary negotiations, and before its appointment of the TRC in 2018, the proposal was changed to include one of the national minorities, the Kvens, and on its own initiative the TRC in 2019 included the Norwegian Finns in the mandate (Sannhets-og forsoningskommisjonen, 2023).

The Norwegian TCR had 12 members, mainly academics, with Norwegian, Sámi and Kven backgound, and a total budget of NOK 40.9 million³ over 5 years, only a fraction of the RCIRCSA’s resources. Its mandate was to ‘investigate and map Norwegian policy and actions towards the Sámi and Kven from 1800-today; investigate past and contemporary consequences of the ‘Norwegianisation’ policies; and propose measures for reconciliation’ (Sannhets- og forsoningskommisjonen, 2023, author summary and translation).

The TRC on its own initiative chose a ‘low profile’ communication strategy. Although it invited the public and the news media to its open meetings, and the Chair of the Commission occasionally gave interviews, participated in TV-programmes and wrote commentaries in major mainstream news media, the TRC, in contrast to the RCIRCSA, did not actively include the news media in its proceedings. Findings and conclusions were, with some few exceptions, not published until the final report was submitted in 2023. This modus of operation was decided on by the TRC and communicated both in research interviews and in news interviews to the public by its chair several times. According to the mandate, the TRC could have chosen to publish findings and conclusions in batches or given advice to the Parliament before its period ended (Josefsen et al., 2023). Unlike the RCIRCSA, but in line with Norwegian policy formation practices, the TRC had no legal powers, called no public witnesses and, accordingly, led to no convictions or court cases.

The TRC conducted archival research, initiated a set of external investigations, set up 37 meetings with local communities and organisations, and collected 766 individual stories (Sannhets-og forsoningskommisjonen, 2023). The work of the TRC can be divided into several categories. The first can be termed historical documentation that investigated how Norwegianisation processes historically were carried out, relying mainly on existing research and archival work. The second, ‘institutional listening’, consisted of the 37 open meetings around the country, mostly by invitation from local organisations. The TRC also had one open hearing where concerned parties (stakeholders), mainly Indigenous and minorities’ organisations, put forward their views and claims. A typical trait with all open meetings and hearings was that the Commission members listened to views and opinions presented but rarely asked questions, engaged in dialogue or presented preliminary findings. The listening process also involved a standing and open invitation to people and organisations, that is, witnesses, to tell and submit their own stories about experiences with Norwegianisation. The individual stories would be public or anonymised after the witnesses’ own wish. Some of them are quoted in the final report, however, the quotes are often decontextualised, illustrative and not integrated in the texts as complementary evidence. This use of the witnesses’ texts clearly provides access and voice, yet the status of the witnesses in the listening process remains uncertain. The TRC’s third main category of work was not public and consisted of collection and analyses of collected and mapped material, closed commission meetings, and meetings with stakeholders. Eight external reports were also commissioned, published as attachments to the final report.

The TRC’s 700-page report was presented to the Presidency of Parliament on 1 June 2023 and represented the first comprehensive documentation of past injustices and present consequences of discrimination, racism and Norwegianisation policies. All stories and documents were archived by the TRC and after submission of the report stored in a specific TRC-archive within The National Archives. Safety for the witnesses and privacy were secured by a specific law binding the members and staff of the Commission and protecting the data, among them the non-public personal stories, with confidentiality for 100 years.⁴

Journalism and media coverage

Australia: Media and communication were central to the establishment and conduct of the Australian Royal Commission. The leadership and ‘open justice’ approach of its Chair, Justice Peter McClellan, was central, and the commission developed strong relationships with media, particularly the national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) which made a significant commitment across its 5 years and covered every public hearing. Each hearing was open to the public and was live streamed, an important digital innovation at the time. As part of its public communication strategy the commission embraced social media for both promotion of its activities and findings, and for keeping an open dialogue with the survivor community.

Media coverage of the RCIRCSA was intense and sustained over its 5 years, with overall positive sentiment from Australia’s news media. Despite the Commission’s wide remit to address abuse in all institutions, however, coverage of the RC was uneven, with stories of abuse in religious institutions and schools dominating. The most high-profile cases were about abuse within Catholic churches and schools, with Case study 28 involving Cardinal George Pell receiving a disproportionate amount of coverage.

News values and the logics of news production were a significant factor in what the media attended to, and which cases of institutional abuse were overshadowed. This was a mediated national event, and the Australian media were committed to telling the story. Journalists were ‘embedded’ inside the royal commission, with live access to the hearings and a daily feed of often highly dramatic courtroom-style news. Many of the subjects of the hearings were high-profile powerful organisations for whom the scandal of past institutional practices made for sensationalist celebrity-style coverage. Journalists’ sourcing practices meant that not only was the RCIRCSA a ‘news subsidy’ but it also made available interview ‘talent’ among victim and survivors and subject organisations.

These same news values and practices meant that some important cases covered by the Royal Commission were all but ignored by Australia’s news media. Despite the high number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who told their stories, the Royal Commission did not hold a case study specifically about First Nations communities. News hierarchies and values meant that journalists did not ‘see’ or report on these cases, and their stories, and the structural factors behind them, were left to the Private Sessions and to the work of the policy teams in the Commission’s final report. The Commissioners may have listened, but this did not extend to journalistic new practices that virtually silenced the stories of those First Nations children abused historically in missions and orphanages or more recently in out of home care setting, despite this being one of the most profound stories of the Commission (McCallum et al., 2022).

Norway: Before the appointment of the TRC in 2018, there was substantial reporting on the proposal from the Sámi Parliament, however, during its time in operation, the TRC drew uneven and skewed media attention. Media reporting on the proposals prior to the Parliament’s decision on and appointment of the TRC and during the TRC’s first years of operation yielded several clear conclusions. First, the proposal and appointing of the TRC received little attention in Norwegian mainstream news media, and during its period of operation (2018–2023) the number of news pieces, commentaries and opinion items fell markedly until the report was published. Further, attention to the TRC was hierarchical in the sense that it was highest in the Sámi and Kven news media and the local news media in North Norway. This region holds the traditional homelands of the Sámi and the Kven populations, and in these media, there are continuous debates about land rights and Indigenous and minority culture and politics. There was hardly any coverage in nationwide news media except for two small niche newspapers (Vranic and Skogerbø, 2022), even though Sámis are increasingly living in urban centres (Berg-Nordlie et al., 2022). Olsen (2023) analysed media reporting on two of the TRCs meetings with local organisations where local media attended and where there were local issues that could be linked to the TRC’s mandate. Despite this, the meetings were hardly reported, and not at all in nationwide news media.

In its last operating year, 2023, the TRC’s news value increased and attracted more nationwide media reporting, facilitated by the increasing protests against the wind energy power plants on the Fosen peninsula that the Supreme Court in 2021 had found in breach of the human rights of the local Sámi reindeer herders.⁵ Since the wind power plants, in which the Norwegian state had majority ownership, were neither removed nor the reindeer herders compensated following the Supreme Court ruling, the issue drew increasing public attention. In February and June 2023, the protests culminated in week-long civil disobedience-actions and demonstrations in Oslo, the latter coinciding with the presentation of the TRC’s report to Parliament. This conflict, led by an alliance of young Sámi and the largest environmentalist youth organisation involving artist and international environment activists and occupation and blockades of several Ministries, attracted massive news reporting and turned into an international news event. This and other cases (Fjellheim, 2023) that saw increasing conflicts on ‘green colonisation’, conflicts between local and Indigenous people on the one side and the energy and mining industries on the other, highlighted the relevance and news media attention to the TRC’s report.

The submission of the TRC report on 1 June 2023 was reported and commented on extensively in Norwegian news media, causing a brief peak in attention. As the TRC had not published findings prior to the release of the report, some items in the report were highlighted by the Chair and reported widely in the news coverage. Among these were documentation of past policies of child removal from Sámi families and the dark experiences from boarding schools shared by many witnesses. Nevertheless, the journalistic attention to the TRC had diminished over the 5 years it had been in office. Following the submission, the staged reading of the report for 30 hours – broadcast by NRK – and the large demonstrations against the wind power plants intensified media reporting for a few days. Interestingly, however, although representing continued dispossession of Sámi lands, the Fosen case was not mentioned by the Chair of the TRC in his submission speech nor by the President of the Norwegian parliament who received it. The presentation of the report, live-streamed and contextualised by the ongoing conflicts, nevertheless played into the news values as a high-profile case and received massive journalistic attention at the time. The main picture, however, is that the TRC made few headlines in the nationwide media whereas it was a continuous and lasting issue in the Sámi, Kven, local and regional media.

Discussion

Returning to the first research questions we set out, what characterised media reporting on the two inquiries, the first point to note is the major differences between the two cases concerning the publicity they attracted – and created. The RCIRSCA had a narrower remit than the TRC as its mandate was to investigate institutional child sexual abuse. Its legal powers and funding were of a fundamentally different scale, and its approach to publicity and strategy of communication substantially different from the TRC’s. The RCIRCSA’s mandate more than indicated that the inquiry would uncover criminal activities, abuse and most likely lead to scandals, and as such would easily fall into established logics of news production. These factors add to explaining the differences in journalistic attention, but still we find similarities in the overshadowing of cases that involved First Nations children in Australia and the general silence in Norwegian mainstream media concerning the TRC’s mandate throughout most of its period (McCallum et al., 2022; Vranic and Skogerbø, 2022).

The conditions for public listening were fundamentally different as the inquiries unfolded: The RCIRCSA did open a space for institutions (public and civil) to listen to the voices of survivors. It was an exercise in public listening, albeit unevenly executed (Scudder et al., 2023). The intense focus by media on the Royal Commission contributed to raising the issue on the public agenda and providing a voice for victims and survivors. It led to significant legislative change, government investment in child safety and prosecution of many perpetrators. The pace of change within the investigated institutions is less clear as the media spotlight on institutional abuse waned. In the absence of a Royal Commission, media reporting is driven by court reporting and focuses on perpetrators, single episodes and celebrity scandals, rather than investigative or ‘thematic’ styles of reporting that privileges the voice of the victim and the broad social contexts and policy issues (McCallum et al, 2023).

The TRC also provided spaces for listening and did in this respect shift the focus from access and voice to listening practices, documented by the invitation to contribute stories and informally and formally meetings between witnesses and commissioners. Yet, the public spaces for public discussion were neither created nor maintained by the TRC, rather they were found in peripheries of the Norwegian media landscape. In the nationwide media, the TRC rarely attracted attention, and if so, it was categorised as an issue mainly of relevance for Indigenous people and minorities, thereby continuing a pattern of marginalisation and silencing of First Nations matters. The public spaces were found in regional, local, minority and Indigenous media which continuously reported and debated the issue, despite the silence of both the TRC and the nationwide media, thereby also showcasing the importance of these often-ignored news media. The extensive reporting on the TRC in local and Indigenous media indicates that journalists may not only have provided space for witnesses but also were witnesses themselves – and at the same time members of the communities that experienced long-term consequences of the Norwegianisation processes. Drawing on the public listening framework, there was little evidence in nationwide news media that journalism contributed to shifting the orientation from ‘gate keepers to gate-openers’ (Wasserman 2013: 80). The TRC’s work did not attract much attention until it could be linked to a public scandal, the ongoing violation of human rights on Fosen.

While the RCIRCSA was about the issues of child sexual abuse in institutions, rather than national reconciliation, it can be argued that as a truth-telling style of inquiry, and given its size, length and profile, it contributed to shaping the national narrative of Australia as a nation that strives for ‘good’, is open to listen to the marginalised, accountable for past behaviours and willing to respond and make change. It has been the catalyst for several national inquiries on issues such as disabilities, aged care and banking.

In response to the second research question, how did the communication of each inquiry amplify or silence the voices and experiences of First Nations peoples, we found that mainstream news media, on the whole, served to sideline rather than amplify the historical and continuing impacts of colonial policies of child removals as heard by the RCIRCSA. The uneven attention of media reporting on the inquiry effectively silenced the experiences of First Nations, disabilities and out of home care survivors at the expense of high-profile Church institutions. In doing so it exacerbates Australia’s settler colonial narrative – that this ‘White’ society is capable of addressing ‘issues’ in its institutions and ‘moving on’ from past injustices. Yet First Nations organisations, experts and issues do not sit at the centre of public discussion about social issues such as child sexual abuse. The grand Australian narrative supported by media reporting of the Royal Commission (Andrews et al., 2023) is that fundamental structural change that will shift power between First Nations and the colonial state is not needed (see also Thomas et al., 2019).

The Chair of the Norwegian TRC announced 6 months prior to the presentation of the final report that its work would be ground-breaking and lead to a re-writing of Norwegian history (Sannhets-og forsoningskommisjonen, 2022). In other words, that the TRC’s report would contribute to changing the grand narrative of Norway as a tolerant and inclusive society by drawing attention to racist and discriminatory practices that had long-lasting negative consequences for the Sámi, Kven and Norwegian-Finns. In his speech accompanying the submission of the report to Norwegian Parliament on 1 June, these expectations were toned down. The final report documented past atrocities, but suggested few measures for reconciliation, redress and reckoning. The ‘Report of Shame’ as one commentator called it, may have the potential but whether it will shift the stories that the nation tells about itself, will only be evident in the years to come.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we return to the third research question and ask what lessons can be drawn from the juxtapositioning of journalism on and mediation of the two. The first to note are the striking similarities in the patterns of the reporting despite the differences in themes, scope and scale of the two commissions. The prevailing news values – grounded in social and colonial structures – steer the reporting. News that is relevant and palatable to stakeholders and targeted audiences, be they global, nationwide, local or minority, will be reported, otherwise stories and voices will remain overshadowed.

Second, the importance of the commissions’ active interaction with journalism and news logics to inform, involve and communicate both with the silent and marginal voices and with the majority audiences, comes out clearly from the juxtaposition of our two cases. News coverage is a scarce and critical resource for truth-telling commissions that seek to change the predominant conversations and stories that maintain structural injustices and biases in the relationships between majorities and minorities. These stories also challenge the framework of journalism, namely the established news values and news logics (Harcup and O’Neill, 2017), and thereby potentially the economic and social foundations of the mainstream news media. Although this study has clear limitations in terms of the number of cases and comparability, it raises important questions of whether, and if so how, the structural constraints of news reporting on truth-telling can be overcome.

Footnotes

Funding

The authors received financial support for the research, authorship, and publication for this article: The Silent Voices project (in Norwegian: De tause stemmene) was supported by the Council for Applied Media Research/The Norwegian Media Authority. The Breaking Silences: Media and the Child Abuse Royal Commission project was supported by by the Australian Research Council, DP190101282.

ORCID iDs

Eli Skogerbø

Kerry McCallum

Notes

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Overshadowed voices in media reporting on truth-telling commissions

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Literature review and theoretical framework

Approach and methods

Findings

Historical, cultural and policy factors

Public listening

Journalism and media coverage

Discussion

Conclusion

Footnotes

Funding

ORCID iDs

Notes

References