Abstract
Journalism has both contributed to shaping and been shaped by colonialism and has reproduced the status quo at the expense of those on the margins. Considering this reality, this study explores how journalism education and practice can be unlearned through a decolonising, Indigenous standpoint. It does this through an Indigenous co-led approach that brings together journalism students, journalism academics, and working journalists with family connections to, or extensive experience working with, 10 distinct Indigenous people groups. The participants provided provocations to journalists interested in unlearning the standard way that journalism is learned and practised.
Keywords
Introduction
The place now known as Australia is home to the world’s oldest continuous cultures and is a place where storytelling has been practised for millennia. Such storytelling has traditionally taken place through oral history, song and dance, and through paintings and carvings (Taçon et al., 1996). But, following on from British arrival in the 1780s, a new form of storytelling, journalism, arrived on the continent in 1803. This storytelling was written rather than spoken or visual and used conventions foreign in many ways to Indigenous Australian storytelling. An example of this is the concept of ‘news values,’ which dictate the principles that make information newsworthy, and that were suggested as a topic to be included in Australia’s first journalism curriculum, which followed on from the first university journalism programmes to emerge in Europe in 1899 and America in 1908 (Westbury, 2021).
Australia has a painful, contentious, and troubling history with Indigenous peoples and one that is also reflected in the journalism Australia has produced (Clarke, 2020; Heinritz and Josephi, 2006). As an endorsing party (in 2009) of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Australia bears a responsibility to ‘ensure that State-owned media duly reflect Indigenous cultural diversity’ and to ‘encourage privately owned media to adequately reflect Indigenous cultural diversity’ (United Nations, 2007). This framework—not yet adopted by Australian governments (federal or otherwise)—recognises that Indigenous Australians also have the right ‘to the dignity and diversity of their cultures, traditions, histories and aspirations which shall be appropriately reflected in education and public information’ (United Nations, 2007).
A mix of both anecdotal and empirical evidence coupled with evolving research findings, as detailed in the literature review that follows, demonstrate that disconnects and disparities exist between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians and that this disconnect extends into journalism education and practice. These issues are not unique to Australia. Scholars in Canada, for example, have also found that Canadian journalism tends to support colonialism and perpetually frames Indigenous peoples within a larger deficit discourse (Anderson and Robertson, 2011).
Recognising these disparities and Australia’s unfulfilled responsibilities, this study’s overall ambition is to consider how journalism education and practice can be unlearned through decolonising, Indigenous-led approaches in order to envision media futures that are more just, representative, and sustainable. We are not alone in this work. Other scholars in Australia and beyond (Callison and Young, 2020; Cubbage, 2022; Fowler-Watt and Jukes, 2019) have called for the need to rethink journalism and learn from Indigenous and decolonising perspectives in the areas of media literacy and media production.
We approach these concerns through bringing together a mix of Indigenous and non-Indigenous journalists, media professionals, journalism academics and students, to a full-day workshop—facilitated by an Aboriginal design expert, strategist, and researcher—that included two yarning circles, a mapping activity, and a speculative news writing exercise. Our research team was a close collaboration between six individuals, including three Indigenous Australians. The approach taken is detailed further in the ‘method' section and, because of space limitations, this paper details learnings from the stories shared during the yarning circles only.
In order to provide a strong foundation upon which this work can take place, the literature review that follows begins by first outlining more fully how Australian journalists and media professionals have historically represented Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders. It continues by discussing how Indigenous Australians use legacy and social media to share news and underscores the importance of truth-telling to reconciliation. The literature review ends with an overview of decolonising theory and principles that inform our own approach with this paper.
Literature review
Scholarship on media and racism dates back to the 1970s (Eggerking, 1996) and has identified a number of factors that contribute to journalists’ coverage of Indigenous Australians. These include the relatively low number of Indigenous Australians, overall, and the relatively low number of them who are journalists, which leads to in- and out-group dynamics and portrayal of issues in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Clarke, 2020). These dynamics also lead to a reliance on existing stereotypes of Indigenous Australians, including portraying them narrowly as criminals, protesters, or victims (Meadows, 1994). Non-Indigenous journalists tend to frame structural inequities and inequalities as ‘Aboriginal problems’ rather than as mainstream society’s problems to wrestle with and address (Thomas et al., 2019). Similarly, these journalists also tend to frame key political and economic issues in ways that rarely include Indigenous Australians, making it seem that the issues of the mainstream are different to the issues of the marginalised. Journalists typically evidence unequal sourcing practices where (non-Indigenous) authority figures are given precedence in quoted material, visual representations, or airtime, compared to Indigenous sources (Eggerking, 1996). All these dynamics are compounded by the lack of personal, first-hand experience with Indigenous Australians and their cultures by non-Indigenous Australians (ibid). Without this, non-Indigenous Australians are unlikely to engage in perspective-taking and challenge or interrogate assumptions.
Early scholarship from the 1990s (McKee, 1995; Meadows, 1994; Trigger, 1995) focused on how journalists covered Indigenous affairs. These studies found that Australian journalists tended to reproduce dominant tropes and depict Indigenous Australians in stereotypical and racist ways. Later work in the 1990s expanded from analyses of coverage to interviews with journalists themselves. Ewart’s 1997 study, for example, interviewed journalists about whether they perceived as problematic their reporting practices related to coverage of Indigenous Australians. Ewart found a contradiction between the way journalists work and their self-perceptions about their own reporting practices. Ewart also found that certain news values, such as conflict, that journalists arguably learn during their formal training, were applied more frequently to Aboriginal peoples compared to other ethnic groups. Such trends continued into the 2000s and 2010s (McCallum and Waller 2017; Thomas et al., 2019).
Research that examined coverage of Indigenous Australian Affairs from the 1970s through to the late 2010s identified that the coverage was largely one-sided and relied on four consistent narratives: a white mastery narrative, an irreconciliation narrative, a subordination narrative, and a sovereignty/nationhood narrative (Thomas et al., 2019). This research found that non-Indigenous journalism ‘does not comprehend our [Aboriginal] aspirations and standpoints,’ engages in ‘relentless negativity [that] even denies our identity,’ and provides ‘little space [for Aboriginal peoples] to present our experiences, understandings, and diverse views’ (p. 6).
In contrasting much of mainstream Western journalism with Pacific (and specifically New Zealand) journalism, Robie (2019), argues that the former is often oriented to elites at the expense of grassroots sources; is frequently detached and uninvolved rather than reflexive; and is largely uninterested in providing solutions. It is also typically vertical and hierarchical rather than horizontal and distributed; tends to be individualistic rather than communitarian; is usually focused more on crime, disaster, and deviant behaviour over community needs, development, and wellbeing; and is mostly consumer-focused as a business rather than operating as a public interest community organisation. Robie’s work shows that there are alternative ways to conceptualise, learn about, and produce journalism and argues for a ‘greater appreciation of the complexities of media cultures in Pacific nations’ (2019: 1). It is joined by a recent framework developed for decolonising the news media in New Zealand (Rankine et al., 2022).
Despite decades of unfair and stereotypical coverage by mainstream news organisations, more recent scholarship (Myers et al., 2022); however, found that newer players in the Australian news media landscape, such as The Guardian Australia (founded in 2013), provide more ‘sustained and diverse’ Indigenous affairs coverage (largely helped by the creation in 2018 of an Indigenous Affairs Editor position) in both its everyday coverage and its special projects by embracing the affordances of digital networked media and diverse Indigenous Australian contributors. Its innovative practices, such as its partnership with IndigenousX to provide a public platform for discussion of Indigenous issues by non-journalists, have been lauded as contributing to a more diverse and healthy news and media ecosystem (Myers et al., 2022). This has created some momentum in that other organisations have created similar positions, with examples such as an Indigenous Affairs Journalist at The Age and a news executive position at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for Indigenous news.
Current landscape and attitudes towards change
Various Indigenous Australian media organisations exist that seek to provide news and current affairs to their communities. These include organisations and services like Koori Radio, the National Indigenous Radio Service (NIRS) and its radio news service; National Indigenous Television (NITV); the Koori Mail and the National Indigenous Times (NIT). In addition, more diffuse social media conversation and discourse exists (such as on what was Indigenous Twitter and the rise of Indigenous influencers on Instagram and TikTok), which also play an important and influential role (Carlson, 2013). These individuals, organisations, and services exist ‘due to the failure of mainstream media to adequately reflect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in news and public discourse’ (Liddle, 2020: 8).
The most recent Australian Reconciliation Barometer report (Reconciliation Australia, 2022) found that the proportion of non-Indigenous Australians who believe it is important to undertake formal truth-telling processes is sizable at 83 percent but also noted that about a third of Australians perceive that media portrayals of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are usually negative. It also found that beyond personal experience with Indigenous people, media portrayals and representations were non-Indigenous Australians’ main source of information about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, above school education, parents and family, and other people around the respondents. This points to the ongoing need for diverse news media and appreciation of the complexities of Indigenous peoples’ perspectives and experiences, and invites decolonising approaches to unlearn journalism education and practice.
Decolonising theory
This project draws on decolonising theory as a framework that informs the study’s research design, methods, and analytical approaches. Scholars such as Mignolo (2011) draw distinctions between postcolonial theory, which they argue originates from a Euro-centric space, and decolonial theory, which they argue originates from the thinkers in the Global South. These scholars position decolonial theory as ‘thinking that de-links and opens to the possibilities hidden by the modern rationality’ (p 46). It is being open to beliefs and practices, including traditional knowledges and Indigenous spirituality, that modernity seeks to discredit. This applies to Indigenous storytelling, education systems and approaches, and to the way journalism itself has historically worked and been conceptualised. We join other scholars, such as Todorova (2016) in questioning whether something can ever truly be decolonial and so adopt the term ‘decolonising’ instead to signal the never-ending work of dismantling oppressive systems.
The project desires to unlearn journalism education and practice through Indigenous ways of thinking, being, and knowing. We use visual and relational methods to first explore the ways that participants perceive how mainstream news outlets and journalists report on Indigenous Australians. Doing so promotes a conversation about the current state of journalism education and practice and the factors that are contributing to it. It also helps participants understand where the current inequalities, inequities, structural biases, and sources of harm are so that they can reflect on these later when we ask them to use a decolonising lens to reimagine journalism education and storytelling about Indigenous Australians. Thus, our research question asks: What common narratives emerge through yarning about media stories related to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders peoples? What can these narratives tell us about how to unlearn journalism education and practice?
Method
This Indigenous-led study adopts a decolonising, participatory design approach so that its design, data collection, analysis, and presentation processes are more equitable, inclusive, and representative compared to the isolated insights that might be possible through individual interviews or surveys. The study also includes innovative, visual and relational methods and design thinking approaches through an Indigenous lens. Our approach shares several characteristics with action research (Cohen et al., 2017). Specifically, both our approach and action research are united by a desire to contribute to positive social change, challenge inequalities, flatten the hierarchy between research participants and researchers, and prioritise collaboration and mutual learning (Dreher and Voyer, 2015). Our approach also has some unique features, particularly concerning how the data were analysed and written up, as will be detailed later in this section.
Research team and participant characteristics
The research team consists of six individuals, including three Indigenous Australians. One is an expert in decolonising participatory design approaches, one is an expert in cultural competence, decolonising methodologies, and practice-led research, and one is a working Indigenous media professional who collaborated with participants to involve them in the research and was central to the data analysis process. The other three members of the research team include one Pacific academic with expertise in Indigenous studies in higher education, education, decolonising methodologies, and research ethics and protocols; one former journalist and current journalism academic; and one expert in digital inclusion, participatory research design, and media literacy.
Data collection and analysis
The project’s working Indigenous media professional (and first author) invited Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants to a six-hour decolonising, participatory design workshop held in late 2021. These Indigenous participants had family connections to the following Indigenous communities: the Bigambul people (QLD); the Wagadagem, Zagareb, and Meriam peoples (Torres Strait); the Wiradjuri people (NSW); the Walbunja people (NSW); the Bundjalung and Minjungbal peoples (NSW); and the Gamilaraay people (NSW/QLD). This group included journalists, journalism students, and senior media executives. Eight non-Indigenous participants included journalism students, journalism and communication academics, and journalists and other related media professionals. This group also included people from Manus Island and Sri Lanka and a media professional who had significant working experience with the Adnyamathanha peoples (SA). In all, the workshop included 17 participants.
We engaged an Aboriginal facilitator to lead the workshop, which prompted this group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants to think critically about pasts, presents and futures of Indigenous Australians and Indigenous Australian Knowledges in the media landscape. The workshop’s goal was to ‘equip tomorrow’s journalists with the tools they need to effectively and ethically cover Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.’
At the workshop, we first welcomed participants and provided them with an explanation of the decolonising theory and methods that informed the project’s design. Next, we invited participants to arrange themselves in a circle for a yarning session. During this, we asked participants to introduce themselves and their backgrounds (including geographic backgrounds, social/cultural backgrounds, occupations, identities, and experiences) that they and their fellow participants brought to the workshop. We gave each participant a circular ‘prompt card’ with a collection of semi-abstract shapes on it and encouraged the participants to use it as a source of visual inspiration to answer the prompt: ‘What is the media story of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples?’ 1 We provided participants with coloured markers and told them they could cut, colour, or write on the card as they desired to respond to the prompt. We invited participants to then share what they had written, drawn, or coloured in during a second full-group yarning session.
Analysis, member checking and authentication checking
Following on from the workshop, the Aboriginal facilitator prepared a 25-page project report that summarised the workshop’s findings while the rest of the research team transcribed the yarning circle dialogue. The project team then distributed this report and the transcripts to all participants and invited them to comment on its accuracy and to raise any issues of problematic transcription or interpretation that appeared in it. The feedback from the workshop was uniformly positive.
Next, the project team met to examine the raw data that were produced during the decolonising participatory design workshop and to collaboratively discuss the team’s analytical approach. This first meeting included a review of all transcripts from the yarning circle and a review of all image cards. The team collaboratively examined the transcripts to identify themes that appeared across the participants’ narratives and noted these for later interpretation. The team continued to meet at least once per quarter for the next 2 years to analyse the data and draft the paper in an open and collaborative way, allowing the process to take the time necessary and without time pressures. This approach ensured consensus, agency, and space for deep reflection and analysis.
Emerging stories
Several stories emerged as participants shared through spoken and visual narratives and used their image cards that they wrote on, drew on, or otherwise annotated or transformed. These included stories related to (1) space and place; (2) time and history, including the cyclical nature of news and narratives about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; and (3) ways to unlearn and work towards restor(y)ing 2 journalism education and practice. These stories don’t necessarily represent discrete categories; rather, reflecting decolonising perspectives, we acknowledge that concepts and parallels exist among them; however, they are organised in this fashion due to the conventions of journal article publishing, which requires a linear approach. Together, these three narratives provide significant insights on the issues contributing, on one hand, to absent, poor, or problematic news media coverage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and, on the other, how Indigenous perspectives and approaches can foster an unlearning of journalism education and practice.
Space and place
Participants shared in the workshop that space and place are integral parts of identity and cultural practices for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. For outsiders and many westerners, space and place perhaps first conjure notions of land and environments. However, workshop participants shared that space and place are not just geographic terms and do not exclusively refer to the physical features of the built or natural environment; they also include intellectual, social, emotional, spiritual, and non-tangible dimensions. Participants critiqued non-Indigenous journalists’ lack of knowledge, awareness, and understanding and how these shortcomings inform their positionality, ideologies, reporting practices, and overall approach to the craft of journalism.
Participants expressed frustration regarding journalists’ lack of recognition of space and place and how this lack of understanding frequently extends to the stories they tell. Participants discussed how story location is more than just geography; it’s also about the story’s connection to the wider concept of Country. In the words of a Torres Strait Islander participant: ‘Home’ can mean very many different things depending on where you’re from. What Country is. What is the place of Country in journalism? That interconnectedness of Country being central to who we are, the grounding of who we are, very much the foundation of who we are. The way we conduct ourselves because of that bloodline connection to Country and respect for where we live and report, too.
Workshop attendees contended that a relationship with place and space should extend beyond just adding in to an article’s ‘dateline’ a reference to where the story was produced. A more appropriate relationship to space and place should encompass a much deeper, more aware, and respectful understanding of the land (including skies, lands, and waters as elements of Country), community values and protocols, and how these inform the way people encounter Country. Participants said this understanding also needs to acknowledge how place, or a lack of connection to place, informs one’s worldview and interrelationships. For example, expectations and responsibilities change during community ‘sorry business’ (periods of death and mourning). During these periods, access to spaces and sources can be limited permanently or conditionally depending on identity and connection to community, gender, age, and timing. Journalists’ access to places and sources should be negotiated and not assumed, participants said.
These ideas extended to how the group believed journalism education might evolve to prepare future journalists who have an awareness and understanding of where they come from, where they learn and practice, and how this may form the basis for a decolonising approach to journalism curriculum and training.
In addition to considerations around physical space that have already been addressed, participants also discussed social space and the way Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have, since colonisation, been pushed to the periphery of place and space. One of the Aboriginal participants put it like this: ‘I’m walking in one world but someone’s come into my world and told me that my world is fucked but it actually isn’t. It’s about reminding and bringing that back.' This ideological imperialism affects how journalists and other media professionals represent Indigenous Australians.
This lack of a central societal position and of visibility leads to a lack of deep engagement with Indigenous Australian perspectives and a lack of richness when those topics are covered in mainstream journalism. In the words of one of the journalism educators in the room: In scribbling on the back, it became more poignant as I started painting this bit and then this felt pen came through, half-through the paper. It’s a bit like that. Indigenous stories are sort-of there in the background. We kinda acknowledge it. We do the acknowledgments. We sort-of do the right thing but we’re not engaging with it. It’s there in the background. It’s a shadow. It’s a ghost of a story and that’s not good enough.
In addition to a deeper and more reflective awareness of where journalists come from (physically, socially, politically, etc.) and who is relegated to the margins of social space, journalists have to unlearn their understandings of history and reconfigure their relationships with time, the topics of the next thread, to create more sustainable and quality forms of journalism.
Centreing time and history
Time and history emerged in the workshop as important concepts that are often in tension with how contemporary journalism is produced and taught. Indigenous Australia spans tens of thousands of years, which is maintained through oral histories and a broad range of cultural expressions. Yet this rich history isn’t fully appreciated or used to inform how journalism can be more sustainable. In one of the Torres Strait Islander participant’s words: We have 65,000 years of knowledge that is, for a lot of the part, untapped. I think that, in the current media narrative and, to be able to change that, we need sustainability. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues. It’s not like it’s a trend. It’s not like a Black Lives Matter thing where we can report and choose and cherry-pick the really nice stories that we want. Majority of the time they’re not very nice stories. We have mob dying in custody. And their stories aren’t reported or, if they are, they’re at the fault or expense of the person who’s sadly passed away.
In Indigenous cultures, who holds knowledge and how it is bestowed can be related to time, place, (as has been discussed above in the ‘space and place’ section), gender, social positioning, and relationships. As an example, workshop participants said conversation in Indigenous Australian communities is often intra-rather than inter-generational and age and seniority are important factors in who can speak on behalf of a community and share or distribute knowledge. This gerontological structure in Indigenous Australia differs markedly from western oligarchies where power and respect are related to money, participants said.
Participants recounted that colonial Australia’s history is nascent at just over 250 years. They noted that the relationship to time and history between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples is unevenly taught, understood, and appreciated, which impacts how contemporary journalism and media operate. Tertiary journalism education only emerged in Australia in 1921 and was transplanted from colonising powers in the Global North. This underscores the stark contrast between Indigenous storytelling and Western-style journalism education and practice, which privileges short story cycles and enforces gatekeeping.
Participants spoke about the formulaic nature of journalistic conventions, routines, and patterns, that are also reflected in much of journalism education and reinforced in newsroom practices. The journalism ‘sausage factory’ and daily news grind were described as being antithetical to Indigenous knowledges and the everyday lived experience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. In their words: ‘It’s a constant struggle of the white way you’ve been taught versus the way you are and how you are expected to tell the story rather than how you would innately tell that story.’
Journalism is very linked to time and timeliness but these links have been disrupted by social media platforms, like Twitter (now X) and more recently, TikTok, which allow instantaneous reporting and commentary. While the structures of journalism are changing because of new technology and expectations in content creation, this has not disrupted entrenched colonial ideologies and practices within news organisations, participants said.
In addition to issues with news cycles, different cultures’ relationships with time and cycles, in relation to storytelling, is complex. Measured time is a Western construct. Within Indigenous understandings, time is cyclical, relational, intergenerational, and lived, as well as non-linear, participants said. It resists quantification, is multi-layered, fluid, and interconnected, and transcends chronology and definition. Some have referred to this as deep time or, canonised by an anthropologist, as the ‘everywhen’ (Stanner, 2009).
Workshop participants said an awareness of history is required to identify dominant narratives and challenge them. One of the journalism educators in the room put it like this: ‘We’re still telling the same stories, it’s like a circle, and we don’t seem to be able to break free from it. Nothing seems to change, which I think is really sad.'
Although universities should be well placed to provide students with opportunities to be introduced to historically informed and critical approaches to journalism, participants wondered whether their current emphasis on skills development and industry preparation leaves little opportunity for critical reflection on, engagement with, or understanding of decolonising perspectives. This results in a self-perpetuating teaching and learning mindset. A recent study focused on university journalism students’ engagement with Indigenous Australian knowledges and perspectives, for example, found this engagement was underwhelming, overall, and when present, was dependent on the competencies and interests of the teaching staff (Thomson et al., 2022).
Participants acknowledged that journalism is frequently an emotionally taxing and intense profession with wildly varying schedules and chronic unpredictability. At the same time, the level of responsibility shouldered between Indigenous and non-Indigenous journalists is different, according to the participants. Responsibility and accountability to community and adherence to cultural protocol, specific knowledges and relational obligations place unspoken pressures and expectations on Indigenous journalists. The yarning circle participants argued that Indigenous journalists don’t get to ‘switch off’ their Indigeneity; they have ongoing accountability to community—to the communities they work in, that they have bloodlines to, and to the communities whose lands they live and work on. They share the pain and trauma and depth of responsibility of the communities they work in. They also shoulder the (unpaid and unacknowledged) burden of educating non-Indigenous journalists in the workplace and training them how to report on Indigenous topics appropriately. This emotional labour leads to heightened levels of stress, burnout, trauma, and the potential for leaving the industry. One of the Aboriginal participants summed this view up by saying: What I’ve found is the ontology of First Nations People does not fit with the processes that are driven by corporations and the harm and trauma that causes and the non-recognition of that trauma which then causes further trauma. Our way of being in the world doesn’t fit in with that whole corporate entity, the commercialisation.
Beyond these workplace stresses, Indigenous journalists also face racism from their audiences whether through face-to-face interactions, letters, phone messages, emails, or commentary on social media. A recent example of this is high-profile and award-winning Wiradjuri journalist Stan Grant’s decision to take time off from journalism due to the constant abuse he faced as Q&A Host and for his commentary on the coronation of King Charles III (Meade, 2023). The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s decision to include Grant as an Indigenous voice for its coronation coverage occurred in the context of international criticism of the silencing of diverse voices from countries colonised by the British and whose historical experience is vastly different to those who have benefited from colonialism. By requiring Grant to be ‘the voice’ of Indigenous Australia, The ABC set Grant an impossible task and reinforced non-Indigenous audiences’ expectations that Indigenous cultures are monolithic, and that one person can represent the entirety of the 500-plus nation groups in Indigenous Australia. If a high-profile journalist like Grant, in a position of power, felt ‘unsupported’ (Meade, 2023) by his employer in these circumstances, then it is highly likely those in less powerful positions would also feel unsupported in their everyday work.
When Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were covered in the news, participants overwhelmingly perceived this to be in a generalised and universal way (speaking about or using broad descriptors like ‘Indigenous people,’ e.g.) rather than accounting for specificity and nuance of the more than 500 historical different Indigenous people groups or ‘nations’ that were dispersed around the continent. In a Torres Strait Islander participant’s words: “A lot of the colonial … frameworks are a blanket approach for Blackfullas, they’re like, ‘Oh, they’re all the fucking same. They’re all Aboriginal. They’re all Torres Strait Islander,’ whereas, we all identify completely different within that scope of being Indigenous.”
The way storytelling happens in Indigenous contexts, is that it emerges in relational ways, participants said. Typical Western journalistic practices such as cold-calling sources, allotting a pre-determined amount of time for interviews due to deadline pressures, and asking direct questions, are all antithetical to Indigenous ways of relating and communicating. Culturally, things take place when the time is ‘right.’ Indigenous answers to questions can be indirect and don’t always fit with Western journalists’ expectations for short and sharp sound bites or succinct quotes. Set expectations about story length may also be challenged by organisational values and newsroom expectations. These issues are compounded by business models that prioritise efficiency and profit, metrics, and Western audiences’ expectations.
Unlearning and restor(y)ing journalism
The previous two sections of the paper have outlined the misalignment of values, goals, and intentions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous journalists. As the participants shared, the media and colony are bedfellows—a partnership which continues strongly today. This close and ongoing relationship results in reducing and othering the significance of Indigenous knowledges and presence. It divides rather than unites and thrives on sensationalist reporting, clickbait headlines, and extractive socio-economic practices that ignore the humanity of Indigenous Australians. This self-centred rather than community centred approach underscores the starkly different worldviews evidenced by Indigenous and non-Indigenous journalism. Challenging the colonial default as the hegemonic, common-sense, or normalised way of living, learning, and working has to be central to what might be thought of as ‘restor(y)ing’ journalism (Silburn, 1994).
Through the stories participants told during the workshop, they presented possible ways forward for unlearning and restor(y)ing journalism education and practice. In this paper, ‘re-storying’ refers to radically questioning who is telling a story and their relationship to community, how and when a story is told, how representative of communities a story is, how the dominant perspective can shift, and who a story is for. This will only happen if the way journalism is taught and practised is unlearned.
We focus first on unlearning as it relates to journalism education and then, in the section that follows, on restor(y)ing, and its implications for journalistic practice. Journalism education has been complicit in upholding the colonial narrative and the dominant cultural worldview. This began with the suggestion to have the history of British journalism inform the creation of Australia’s first university course in journalism (Westbury, 2021). While the course did include history, one can safely assume that it did not include Indigenous histories. This is evidenced by repeated calls throughout the subsequent decades for changes to how journalism is taught. These include: a call by the 1987 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody for university journalism programmes to ‘ensure that courses contain a significant component relating to Aboriginal affairs thereby reflecting the social context in which journalists work’ and to ‘consider, in consultation with media industry and media unions, the creation of specific units of study dedicated to Aboriginal affairs and the reporting thereof’ (Australian Government, 1987); the National Indigenous Higher Education Network recommended in 2009 to the United Nations that universities should ‘systemically embed Indigenous perspectives in curriculum and acknowledge the scholarly contributions of Indigenous communities in developing a culturally ethical framework to underpin research and learning’ (National Indigenous Higher Education Network, 2009); and Universities Australia’s expectation since at least 2011 that ‘All graduates of Australian universities will have the knowledge and skills necessary to interact in a culturally competent way with Indigenous communities’ (Universities Australia, 2024). However, recent research has failed to find evidence of how Indigenous perspectives have been included in the everyday learning of Australian journalism students through dedicated courses (Thomson et al., 2022). Participants also echoed these findings, with one Torres Strait Islander participant saying: You will be covering Indigenous affairs and you’ll be covering things that are outside your comfort zone, which is just the job of being a journalist. You have to get skilled up very quickly but I recognise that equipping journalism students to be able to navigate that space respectfully, ethically, responsibly, that’s something that is lacking at the moment.
The current model of addressing Indigenous knowledges and perspectives overwhelmingly relies on one-off lectures, optional readings or resources, and optional elective classes that are not discipline-specific. For instance, within an undergraduate journalism degree in Australia that consists of some 3600 h, students might encounter 60 min of discipline-specific content on Indigenous storytelling principles and news analysis, which is wholly inadequate preparation for journalism students to unlearn colonial approaches to storytelling or be prepared for the workplace they’re entering. One of the workshop participants who teaches an Indigenous Knowledges class said: “Indigenous studies, Indigenous knowledges do not fit into the scheme of things so, sometimes, their [university administrators’] biggest problem is, ‘Where do we put this?’ Nobody understands what it is.”
As one of the participants argued, journalism students tend to be more focused on production and craft rather than on theory or history. However, theory and history inform production and craft and ultimately affect how stories are conceived, pitched, constructed, and received by audiences. If students are not challenged to consider their own standpoint, positionality, and bias, they are unlikely to sit in the discomfort of their lack of knowledge. One of the Indigenous participants in the workshop put it like this: “Trying to locate themselves and find their spaces of belonging is highly problematic for the mainstream Australians. The stories that are being told in mainstream media are from people who do not know their place.”
While students are often told to be impartial, unbiased, transparent, objective, balanced, and fair, these are frequently applied as part of the colonial construct and can result in false equivalences, such as having to quote a racist because it’s seen as providing ‘balance’ on a story about racism. Unlearning these practices and developing the kind of cultural intelligence the workshop participants spoke about would require vastly more time. For non-Indigenous people, cultivating their cultural intelligence and responsibility are ongoing processes that are contextually specific and never complete.
Developing, modelling, and supporting cultural intelligence and unlearning colonial worldviews requires alternate ways to do education, including new kinds of (un)learning experiences, access to Indigenous journalism as course content, and assessment approaches. University timelines and timeframes for semesters or equivalent as well as for assignments and associated feedback periods are inflexible. University timelines and teaching formats, participants said, privilege a purely intellectual awareness rather than first-hand experience and a focus on doing what’s ‘safe’ and comfortable rather than attempting authentic engagement or experiences. To this end, one of the educators in the room asked, “In universities and elsewhere, we have acknowledgments of country and these things we do for 30 s at the beginning of lectures but, then, is the rest of the lecture at all sensitive to Aboriginal perspectives or knowledges?”
Participants also discussed how restor(y)ing can be applied to journalism practice. Decolonising or anti-colonial journalism approaches can make the way for new forms of journalism with different voices being privileged (which reduces or removes the influence of gatekeeping at some outlets). Journalism has for too long, participants said, been focused only on the ‘what’ to the detriment of the ‘when,’ ‘how,’ and the ‘why.’ Privileging and foregrounding these other aspects lead to forms of journalism, such as explainer or solutions journalism (McIntyre, 2019) which requires critical thinking as well as a willingness and opportunity to challenge dominant narratives.
Restor(y)ing journalism involves redistribution of power to empower those without it as well as giving up the far-reaching nature of colonial, structural, and organisational power. This involves who or what is relied on as a source, who is employed, and the power to say ‘no’ to stories that harm or commit violence. An example of this comes from the Yuendumu Community in the Northern Territory of Australia, which, in 2022 published media protocols governing who could be contacted as a source and how reporters could interact with Community following biased and unethical news reporting during the court trial of the police officer who shot 19-year-old Warlpiri man, Kumanjayi Walker. In publishing these protocols, the Community was directly putting media ‘on notice’ and informing it that their members weren’t willing to interact on what the colonial media’s terms were. By taking power back, they were able to broker how much and what kind of interaction they wanted and when. The Community used its members with journalism skills, as well as social media, to get its message, informed by Community deliberation and consensus, to the broader public.
Towards the future of unlearning journalism
As we have undertaken this research, the historic Indigenous Voice to Parliament Referendum has been defeated and illustrates the chasm between Indigenous Australians’ self determination, agency, values, cultures and if or how stories about these are constructed through journalism and media. Australia’s peak journalism body states that journalists have a responsibility to ‘inform citizens and animate democracy’ (Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, 2024). However, it became clear that Australian journalists lacked a basic knowledge of Indigenous Australians, which impacted their ability to be able to effectively report and tell the stories of the campaign leading up to the referendum. Furthermore, it underscored their inability to inform and educate the Australian population about the referendum, its purpose, the questions being asked, and the implications of a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote for the country’s future. Reporting on the referendum starkly revealed that a large sector of non-Indigenous journalists is inexperienced in the reporting of Indigenous issues, communities, and priorities.
Australia is increasingly becoming a more multi-cultural society. The Australian Bureau of Statistics, for example, found in the country’s most recent (2021) census that nearly half of Australians have a parent born overseas and more than a quarter were themselves born overseas (ABS, 2022). Despite this increasing diversity of peoples, Australians think the country’s news media does not fairly represent the country’s diverse population (McGuinness et al., 2023). Furthermore, as has already been demonstrated earlier in this paper, studies of Australian news content also show that coverage of Australia’s ethnic diversity tends to be under- or problematically represented.
Questions, challenges, and guiding principles
To respond to industry demands for ‘well-rounded' journalists as well as to fulfil aspirational conduct found in editorial and ethical codes/policies, we outline seven principles, drawn from the participants’ stories, to inform how journalism education and practice might progress in a decolonising fashion. We acknowledge that these principles are ambitious and that challenges exist around developing and maintaining authentic relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples; around unlearning and reassessing the standard ways that knowledge is taught and the values that education privileges and ignores; and in confronting racism and supporting the wellbeing of Indigneous students and journalists. Yet, these challenges need to be addressed to break the cycle of unfair coverage, disrespectful treatment toward Indigenous peoples and knowledges, and stress and burnout experienced by Indigenous students and journalists alike. To this end, we propose: • • • • • • •
These principles are complementary to ones—such as humility, respect and relationships, accountability, and a trauma-informed approach—that First Nations journalists in other countries, such as Canada, propose are necessary for decolonising journalism education and practice (McCue, 2022).
The sometimes-radical insights and provocations raised in this paper are the direct result of a decolonising approach that benefited from Indigenous lenses and knowledges, and privileged Indigenous voices, to provide vibrant context to the contemporary media context as it relates to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and, critically, to offer ideas on how individuals, organisations, and societies can reconcile historical inequalities through radical change and disruption of current values, practices, and beliefs.
In addition to the aspects (such as us-them framing, deficit narratives, and an over-reliance on the conflict news value) that the literature identifies as contributing to the way Australian journalism reports on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, this study provides fresh insights on the antecedents that have shaped the past and present of reporting on Indigenous Australians as well as suggestions for improving such practices into the future. The suggestions in this paper won’t be easy to progress; however, if we genuinely want to unlearn journalism education and practice, we need to radically and continuously question, resist, and dismantle colonially imposed structures and thinking while at the same time restor(y)ing the narratives we tell, who or what they focus on, and how they are told.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the QUT Digital Media Research Centre.
