“Just a bunch of white bureaucrats talking about Indigenous people”: Interrogating the Anglo-centric identity of Australian community radio news and current affairs

Abstract

Literature that critiques the mainstream news media’s portrayal of First Nations people is plentiful, spanning multiple decades and regions. This article extends this body of research to community media, examining the sources utilised by the most popular syndicated news and current affairs programs broadcast on Australian community radio, through the lens of critical whiteness theory. This has international significance as the Australian community broadcasting sector is one of the oldest and well established of its kind, often considered an exemplar model.

Keywords

community journalism community media community radio representation critical whiteness theory Indigenous First Nations

Introduction

Research that critiques the mainstream media’s portrayal of First Nations¹ people is plentiful spanning multiple decades and regions - including Australia (e.g. Liu and Baker, 2016; Thomas et al., 2020), New Zealand (e.g. Allen and Bruce 2017; Rankine and McCreanor, 2004), the United States (e.g. Grote and Johnson 2021; Tsai et al., 2022), Canada (e.g. Burns and Shor 2021; Lambertus 2004), Chile (e.g. Richards 2007) and Malaysia (e.g. Jamal 2020). This article builds on this body of research to examine the sources utilised by the most popular syndicated news and current affairs programs broadcast on Australian community radio. This has international significance as the Australian community broadcasting sector is one of the oldest and well established of its kind, often considered an exemplar model (Lewis 2015; Tacchi 2003).

Our findings identified a significant prevalence of non-Indigenous stories on the flagship news and current affairs programs of the Australian community radio sector. This promotion and maintenance of an Anglo-centric national identity conflicts with the sector’s stated commitment to fostering the voices of First Nations people. This has negative impacts, not only on First Nations audiences, but also non-Indigenous Australians who are subsequently denied important cultural and contextual understandings of national news and current affairs.

Indigenous representation in media

Media representation can – and does - have a tangible and significant effect on how people are perceived by others, and how (and if) they see themselves reflected in media outputs (Anderson and Backhaus, 2024). As mentioned above, there is a plethora of research pointing to problematic mainstream and mass media representations of First Nations people in colonised societies. News media, alongside its routines, structures and values, are critiqued for perpetuating negative stereotypes (Islam and Fitzgerald 2016), ignoring and misrepresenting First Nations issues (Brown and Harlow 2019), favouring non-Indigenous sources (Forde and Anderson 2015), downplaying traditional knowledge (Belfer et al., 2017), ignoring colonial contexts and promoting whiteness as ‘the norm’ (Dreher and Waller 2022). Research from across the globe demonstrates that news media systematically excludes Indigenous voices from significant areas of social life such as health research, computing, property and commerce (Rankine et al., 2014; Rankine and McCreanor 2004).

Considering the country now known as Australia, Meadows (2001), in his analysis of media coverage surrounding the pioneering 1992 Mabo judgement² and the Australian Bicentenary celebrations in 1988, notes the role Australian journalism has played in ‘creating and sustaining the current environment of uncertainty and division in Australian race relations through its systematic management of information’ (Meadows 2001: p. 7). More recently, Liu and Baker (2016) highlight the dominance of White leaders in media coverage of Australian philanthropists, while a 2020 study of 40 years of mainstream media coverage of First Nations issues in Australia found it spoke to “a White audience and adopt (ed.) a White standpoint” (Thomas et al., 2020: p.235).

Several scholars highlight the role of mainstream media in perpetuating the conditions of colonisation (Burns and Shor 2021; Dreher and Waller 2022; Grote and Johnson 2021; Rankine et al., 2014). Dreher and Waller (2022, p.1672) suggest conventional news values – which give prominence to elite voices - produce “racialised hierarchies of media attention structured in white supremacy”. To be clear, white supremacy is understood here as “the foundation for ongoing practices of race and racism within settler states” (such as Australia), rather than an extreme position or historic artefact (Dreher and Waller 2022: p. 1681). Indeed, Sercombe (in Carden 2017) notes that news outlets are not necessarily acting in a racist manner when they exclude First Nations voices from news coverage but rather are dependent upon courts and police in their day-to-day news gathering practices, institutions with their own histories of systematic exclusionism.

The literature also suggests a correlation between over-representation of non-Indigenous journalists and non-Indigenous sources. Allen and Bruce (2017) say it is unsurprising mainstream New Zealand news coverage normalises Pakeha³ perspectives when Māori journalists are under-represented at 4-6 percent while making up 15% of the country’s population. Likewise, Native Americans comprise less than 1% of newsrooms in the United States (Tsai et al., 2022). This is relevant as First Nations journalists bring unique perspectives to their craft. For example, in Australia, Burrows (2018) found Indigenous media producers prioritised First Nations people with first-hand knowledge or experience as preferred sources.

Importance of sources

News sources – those people, organisations, departments, publications, and documents that provide information to journalists – play an important role in how groups within society are represented, how stories are told and how information is managed publicly (Forde and Anderson 2015). While all members of society should have access to be included in what Ku (2000) refers to as symbolic constructions of the public, it is the dominant culture of a society that dictates these symbolic constructions. The symbolisation of the public through the privileging of some sources over others operates under codes of exclusion and privilege. Public credibility is signified in news (and current affairs) through the choice of sources; the basic building blocks of news organisations (Reese 1994). The public credibility this affords sources is a form of cultural power.

The study of ‘source structures, relationships and activities - in all their complexity - remains central to understanding news content’ (Tiffen et al., 2014: p. 375). The person, or institution, provided with a voice is of primary importance when evaluating how news is constructed. This includes examining who gets to speak, who achieves pre-eminent placement within a story, who is given more space, whose opinions are valued and who is given more direct and privileged access (Conboy, 2007). Focusing on sources highlights that much of the actual ‘power’ of media comes from its ability to ‘amplify the views of certain powerful sources’ (Reese 1994: p. 87) and the discourses of society, and communities, are often controlled by those who control the media (Denzin 1996). As Allen and Bruce (2017 p. 237) remind us, “the news media select who gets to speak, especially regarding minority issues”, and those who lack power tend to not be sought out for comment unless they are involved in conflict or 'immoral' behavior (Gans 2004).

Studies of Australian media have found that ‘the elite’ enjoy a privileged status as news sources, especially those representing government (Simpson 2012; Tiffen et al., 2014). Burrows’ (2004) analysis of Corroboree 2000 — a national reconciliation event designed to improve relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians — found some improvement in reportage but identified a continuing pattern of poor sourcing of Indigenous comment. Clearly, “accurate Indigenous representation requires a platform for Indigenous voices” (Grote and Johnson 2021: p. 498).

Beyond Australia, Allen and Bruce’s (2017) content analysis of media representations of a predominantly Pacific community in South Auckland, New Zealand, found people from that community were rarely quoted about issues relating to them, which promoted negative stereotypes that reinforced marginalisation. Similarly, Rankine et al. (2014) found that Pakeha sources were prioritised over Māori, even in stories specifically about Māori topics. An exception to a general pattern of under-utilising First Nations voices is found in Grote and Johnson’s (2021) study into media representations of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in the USA, where Indigenous voices dominated, albeit those of leaders rather than those located at the protest.

Most studies of news sources investigate mainstream news media. Alternative media has traditionally been neglected by journalism scholars, however, this trend has changed over the past decade. Forde and Anderson (2015) found that alternative and local news outlets gave more prominence to First Nations voices in the reportage of the death in custody of a young Wakka Wakka man, to that of a major mainstream newspaper. Likewise, Islam and Fitzgerald (2016) included the national Indigenous newspaper, The Koori Mail, in its analysis of news representation of obesity in Australian First Nations people, and highlighted the importance of alternative media outlets in enhancing the diversity and quality of such coverage. This article joins a burgeoning body of scholarly work investigating alternative journalism, by examining the sources utilises by community news and current affairs broadcasting in Australia.

Community radio news and current affairs

Community radio is the largest independent broadcasting sector in Australia, considered an essential part of the Australian media landscape. Comprising more than 450 broadcasting services and an audience of over 5 million weekly listeners, community radio aspires to share views not adequately represented in mainstream commercial and state-run media and provide a platform for groups marginalised and silenced in both media representation and production. Australia’s community radio sector serves both communities of interest and lived experience - including First Nations communities, the LGBTIQ + community, people with disabilities, young people, older people, multilingual and multicultural communities, and specialised interests - as well as geographic communities, particularly those in regional and rural areas.

In 2012, Forde and Meadows (2012) (pp. 175–176) suggested it is “through community radio and other community and alternative media that journalism is reclaiming its independence”. Indeed, news and current affairs coverage is an important element of community broadcasting in Australia, evidenced in the most recent Community Radio Listener Survey (McNair yellowsquares 2023), where 48% of people said ‘local information/local news’ was the top reason they listened, well above the second most popular response of ‘music not available on other stations’ (36%). The importance of local news is just as significant for listeners to Indigenous and ethnic media outlets, which Forde et al. (2002) describe as essential services.

While some stations prioritise the production of high-quality, independent community journalism, local news (as opposed to local information) is resource-intensive, and relatively few stations have the volunteering capacity, physical resources, and professional knowledge to consistently produce news and/or current affairs (NCAF) programming. The range of approaches perhaps explains the lack of recent research or independent evaluations of NCAF coverage in the sector. Issues surrounding locally produced NCAF at community radio stations are an ongoing concern with little change since Forde et al. (2002) found that, while 80% of community radio stations broadcast a news service, two-thirds of those did so through one that is syndicated. A more recent survey found just shy of 60% of news bulletins came from external sources (Survey Matters, 2017). There are several different syndicated news services used across the sector to fill the gaps in coverage, however, according to Anderson (2022), National Radio News is the most syndicated news bulletin service in Australian community broadcasting, and as such, is one of the cases from which we take our data. The second is The Wire, a national current affairs program also syndicated through the Community Radio Network (described below).

Obligations under the codes of practice

There is a clear need to examine the content of these news and current affairs services, given the sector’s reliance on syndicated services and community radio’s obligations under both the Community Broadcasting Codes of Practice and the sector’s recent and much-touted Roadmap 2033 (discussed below). The vital societal roles of Australian community broadcasting are central to governing tenets of its sector, enshrined in both legislation and industry codes of practice, most prominently the Community Broadcasting Codes of Practice which advise on a range of priorities including stations’ responsibilities to their communities, diversity and independence, general programming, Indigenous programming, Australian music, sponsorship, and complaints handling. These governing frameworks offer useful guidance as to the kind of journalism that might ideally be practiced on community broadcasting. The Codes are a crucial governance framework, providing guidance on everyday programming and procedures, as well as more high-level strategic advice and guiding principles.

While there is no Code dedicated to news and current affairs explicitly within the current (2008) Community Radio Broadcasting Codes of Practice, there are operational standards and guiding principles that can be applied to news programming. Code Two - Principles of Diversity and Independence, and Code Three - General Programming, cover the requirement to provide access to diverse views, in particular, those not adequately represented by other broadcasting sectors. Most relevant, however, is Code 4: Indigenous programming and coverage of Indigenous issues which aims to acknowledge “the unique status of Indigenous peoples as the first Australians and to offer a way to demonstrate respect for their cultures and customs” (CBAA 2008: p.9). Furthermore, the Codes of Practice introduction outlines six Guiding Principles that aim to unite the sector, most notably within a news and current affairs context, to “promote harmony and diversity and contribute to an inclusive, cohesive and culturally-diverse Australian community”.

At the time of writing, the Codes of Practice are under regulatory review with estimated implementation in late 2024. The latest consultation draft of the Codes retains a standalone Code specifically relating to “First Nations Engagement and Programming” (Draft Code 7). There is also a new Code governing the production and broadcast of “News and Journalistic Content” (Draft Code 5). As such, it is particularly timely to interrogate the current alignment of syndicated news and current affairs coverage with the existing Codes to provide a point of comparison with the new Codes, once implemented.

Most recently, the Australian community broadcasting sector engaged in a lengthy consultative exercise to develop an overarching strategy document. Roadmap 2033 (CBAA & CBF, 2023) offers a high-level vision and strategy for the sector over the next 10 years, outlines four key strategic priorities alongside sector values and more tangible outcomes and strategic enablers. Roadmap 2033 is the result of an 8-month consultative process with stakeholders from across the sector including scholars, broadcasters, technicians, station management, board members, and sector-level leadership. While implementation of the Roadmap at the station-level is as yet unclear, of particular relevance to this research are two of the four strategic priorities: “Amplify diverse voices” and “Secure capacity to meet community need”. The strategic objectives within the “Amplify diverse voices” priority includes to “Reflect First Nations cultures and advance First Nations self-determination in the decisive decade ahead”. One of the strategic objectives is that “Broadcasters are connected and resourced to produce trusted, independent, locally relevant news and current affairs particularly for underserved communities” (2023, p. 13). The strategic vision for the sector places clear emphasis on supporting both First Nations voices and news and current affairs coverage over the coming decade. Clearly, Australia’s community broadcasting sector (outside of First Nations broadcasters) has and continues to position itself as an ally of First Nations people and issues. The release of the Roadmap and the impending implementation of the revised Codes of Practice reinforce the need for accountability and for baseline data on the role of syndicated news and current affairs content in contributing to the goals and positioning of the sector.

Case studies

This research focussed on two of Australian community broadcasting’s flagship syndicated news and current affairs programs. Though there are other nationally syndicated news bulletins and current affairs programming, National Radio News and The Wire enjoy significant support at the sector level and, as such, warrant scrutiny considering the investments in their services.

National Radio News (NRN) is produced at Charles Sturt University (Bathurst campus on Wiradjuri country) in partnership with the sector’s peak body, the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia, funded by the Community Broadcasting Foundation (CBF). It aims to deliver a comprehensive news service that “offers something different to both commercial and public sector services” and claims to focus on diverse voices (CSU, 2023). NRN bulletins run approximately 4 minutes and are broadcast on the hour. Weekdays there are hourly bulletins from 6am until 7pm (14 in total), while on weekends, bulletins are broadcast on the hour from 6am to 12pm (7 in total). Entire bulletins are made available for subscriber stations to broadcast in full, but individual stories and scripts are also accessible through a custom designed software package that allows stations to create their own bulletins. The newsroom is staffed by a paid news director, several paid journalist positions, student journalists, and cadets, with most of the journalists drawn from Charles Sturt University’s Bachelor of Communication (Journalism). In 2019, NRN received funding to hire the sector’s first political correspondent to be based in the press gallery at Parliament House, on Ngunnawal country in Canberra (Ahern and Saxon, 2019).

The second case study, The Wire, is a longstanding current affairs program established in 2004. Known as the sector’s flagship NCAF program, it is also funded by the CBF and described as a “significant alternative voice in Australian current affairs” (The Wire, 2023). The 30-min program is produced by a consortium of stations: at the start of this research this comprised 4EB on Jagera and Turrbal country, in Brisbane, and 2SER on Gadigal land in Sydney; with 4ZZZ, also Brisbane, 3ZZZ in Melbourne (Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung country), and Radio Adelaide (Kaurna country) joining before the last round of content was collected. The program is syndicated nationally and delivered to approximately 200 stations through the Community Radio Network and the CAAMA Radio Satellite. The only paid position is a producer for each show; other contributors are volunteers.

Methodology

We take our lead from Love and Tilley (2013) and the “nascent global discipline of critical whiteness studies … which examines and deconstructs whiteness, putting it under the microscope” (p. 175, emphasis in original). In this way, ‘whiteness' is named and recognised as a specific, racialised cultural identity as opposed to an unmarked normative position, making visible the invisible, and reframing whiteness as a marker of difference, equal to any other ethnocultural or racial signifier (Durie 2003). It is also important to note that the term ‘white' in critical ‘whiteness' is not meant literally - understood in the context of colonised societies, whiteness is “an imagined community encompassing all those who are not Indigenous” (Love and Tilley 2013: p. 179). As such, we investigate the presence and, ultimately, the prevalence of non-Indigenous sources rather than the dearth of First Nations voices, heard on Australian community radio news and current affairs programming.

A multi-faceted, mixed-method approach was employed to take a pluralistic approach to establishing knowledge. Data collection took place in three key phases. The first phase involved content analysis covering one NRN bulletin and one episode of The Wire each day over two separate 5-day periods in February and May 2022. A coding sheet was developed that gathered a robust data set that included diversity indicators of journalists and sources such as gender, accent, and race, adherence to the Codes of Practice, particularly in relation to the guidelines on reporting sensitive topics and using culturally appropriate and place-based language when reporting on First Nations issues, and the types of source. Considering First Nations sources specifically, most were explicitly identified as such in the corresponding news story or were already familiar to the researchers. If neither researcher knew the racial identity of a source they conducted desk research, mostly through news service websites, to confirm.

The audio in Phase One was coded independently by each of the researchers. Following Elo et al. (2014), trustworthiness was privileged as a key criteria of robust qualitative data analysis. To ensure intercoder reliability, 1 day of content was coded initially and the researchers met to discuss any difficulties or concerns with the coding tool. After coding was completed, the researchers met again to discuss the results and any points of differenceor uncertainty. This reflects a qualitative approach to coding where intercoder reliability is not ‘a measure of “objectivity” but as a means of reflexively improving the analysis by provoking dialogue between researchers’ (O’Connor and Joffe, 2020). Following the completion of this research phase, minor adjustments were made to the coding tool. The data from Phase One was considered too small a sample. As such the results have not been included in the analysis and this phase was treated as a pilot. The second phase involved qualitative interviews with producers and journalists of both NRN and The Wire to add depth and context to the research findings. As a side note, the title of this article is taken from an interview with a journalist for National Radio News, speaking on their concerns for reportage that does not include Indigenous sources.

The third research phase – the focus of this article – involved further content analysis, this time focussing on every NRN news bulletin and each episode of The Wire broadcast over the course of two 7-day periods in January and July 2023. A total of 956 stories from NRN and The Wire were analysed (gathered during Phase Three). 920 of these stories were broadcast on NRN and 36 stories were broadcast on The Wire. While there is a significant difference in these numbers, it is worth remembering the very different formats involved: NRN is an hourly program with 14 four-minute news bulletins broadcast each weekday and seven bulletins on weekends. In contrast, The Wire is a daily 30-min news and current affairs program broadcast once each weekday.

Given the high levels of intercoder reliability established in Phase One, coding was shared by the two researchers, who re-employed the method and coding tool described above.This article focusses on the findings of this final phase of content analysis, specifically the overrepresentation of non-Indigenous voices throughout news bulletins on NRN and current affairs programming on The Wire.

Findings

Though the analysis was conducted concurrently, given the vastly different formats, it is more useful to explore the findings of each program separately. Before exploring findings relating to stories and sources, it is worth noting that every journalist and producer of every bulletin and program under analysis of both the NRN and The Wire were non-Indigenous.

NRN averaged between five and six stories in each bulletin and featured a range of story types. ‘Live reads’ – where the newsreader reads the story and is the sole voice - were the most common, followed by ‘intro with grabs’, where the newsreader briefly introduces the story before throwing to a short excerpt from a source (commonly known as a grab). The other formats present but seldom used were ‘voicers’ – the newsreader introduces another journalist who presents a story - and ‘packages’ – where the newsreader introduces a pre-recorded audio story featuring the voice of a journalist and at least one source. Of particular interest to this research were the sources that the journalists drew on to construct their stories. Packages and intros with grabs are the only story types to feature the voices of sources (grabs). Of NRN’s 920 stories, there were 399 grabs from sources across 377 stories. There were 46 sources in The Wire’s 36 stories.

In terms of content, as discussed, Australian community radio is required to serve groups and voices under-represented in the mainstream media. Of NRN’s 920 stories, 802 – or approximately 87% - were about ‘non-Indigenous-specific' issues; 26 of The Wire’s 36 stories focussed on non-Indigenous issues. Non-Indigenous-specific issues were defined broadly as those not focussed specifically on Indigenous people. It is worth noting that the sample dates were purposively selected to include significant dates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people including Invasion Day⁴ (Jan 26) and NAIDOC⁵ (National Aboriginal and Islanders Day Observance Committee) Week (2-9 July), as well as covering the period in the lead-up to Australia’s contentious Voice to Parliament referendum. Of the 128 Indigenous-specific stories across both NRN and The Wire, 51 were about the Voice to Parliament, 31 were about the challenges facing the Central Australian town of Mparntwe (Alice Springs), 13 focussed on Invasion Day, 12 were about NAIDOC Week, and the remained 21 focussed on other topics.

The overwhelming dominance of non-Indigenous-specific stories reduces slightly when focussing solely on stories with sources – however, 282 out of 377 (approximately 75%) of stories with sources were about non-Indigenous-specific news. The dominance of ‘whiteness’ continues into the choice of sources - of the 282 stories with sources that were identified as non-Indigenous-specific stories, non-Indigenous people were overwhelmingly chosen as sources – in 97% of cases (276 out of 282). Interestingly, half of the sources in stories that specifically focussed on First Nations issues were also non-Indigenous people. This is significant as ‘non-Indigenous-specific' stories usually apply to a generic population – for example, stories about health, education, sports or commerce. While non-Indigenous people were often sought to comment on issues that did not relate to them directly, First Nations people were rarely given opportunity to speak on generic issues such as those mentioned above. It is here that the dominance of whiteness – as defined by Love and Tilley (2013) - in the reportage is most stark.

During the time between samples, the CBAA engaged in a process of review and revitalisation of their syndicated news offerings, including The Wire and NRN. Significant work was undertaken to diversify the newsrooms and expand the network of contributor stations to enrich news and current affairs coverage. While there is a noticeable improvement between the January sample and the July sample, in particular, for The Wire, (see Figure 1), there remains a substantial overrepresentation of non-Indigenous sources which signifies the need for further investment and improvements.

Figure 1.

Non-Indigenous vs Indigenous sources included on NRN and The Wire across both time periods.

Discussion

The findings of this research raise several issues, particularly given the context of both the recent critiques of the whiteness of the Australian media and the priorities of the Australian community broadcasting sector specifically. While the overrepresentation of non-Indigenous voices in syndicated news coverage on community radio clearly requires deeper interrogation, it is possible to theorise some potential reasons underpinning the choice of sources. Many of these reasons reflect broader issues within the Australian media landscape and that of other colonised nations. However, given the obligations and positioning of the community broadcasting sector as both a platform for underrepresented voices and as committed to highlighting Indigenous stories, it is important to unpack these issues.

The newsrooms

The natural starting point for interrogating such a significant overrepresentation of non-Indigenous voices on both NRN and The Wire is the newsrooms themselves. Who is making the decisions about the stories and sources featured? As mentioned above, there may be a correlation between over-representation of non-Indigenous journalists and non-Indigenous sources, and, as previously noted, all the producers and journalists at the time of the research, at both NRN and The Wire, were non-Indigenous. This is more of a reflection on the broader Australian media industry rather than a specific critique of the news outlets involved. While no similar research exists for radio news in Australia yet, Media Diversity Australia’s investigation of TV news (Groutsis et al., 2022) found a significant overrepresentation of journalists and presenters from Anglo-Celtic backgrounds: 76% compared to the broader Australian population, where approximately 54% of people have an Anglo-Celtic background. This issue is broadly recognised within the industry with McGuinness et al. (2023) reporting that 87% of journalists surveyed said the news media needs to improve diversity “somewhat” or “a great deal”. Of the 196 journalists who responded to McGuiness et al.’s survey, approximately 96% identified as non-Indigenous (ibid., p. 43). The systemic overrepresentation of non-Indigenous journalists in Australian newsrooms is clearly much larger than the two newsrooms in this sample, however, given the positioning and priorities of the community broadcasting sector, it is important to apply a critical lens when questioning who is selecting, producing, and presenting the news.

Important to note also is the Australian community broadcasting sector’s role as an unofficial “training ground” for the mainstream media. Recent research has highlighted the vital role that participation in community broadcasting plays when it comes to developing the skills and industry experience necessary to move into mainstream journalism and media work (Anderson et al., 2022). Many of the volunteers and staff working at NRN and The Wire are university students, with NRN and The Wire’s Sydney newsroom closely associated and sharing facilities with local universities. For newsrooms that are reliant on students for their volunteer and staff positions, it is primarily the diversity of their feeder institutions that determines the diversity of the newsroom. This is compounded by the equity issues surrounding who can readily engage in volunteering and unpaid work experience (Jackson et al., 2023). To return to the primary focus of sources, community radio newsrooms staffed by students have been seen to echo the production approaches of mainstream news (Backhaus and Anderson 2024; Bahfen and Wake, 2011). This is an ongoing issue in the Australian community broadcasting sector with Forde et al. (2003) observing that community radio trainers felt they were providing broadcast training, instead of specifically community broadcasting training. More recently, Bahfen and Wake (2011, p. 122) noted that, despite specific training from their university lecturers and from their industry partners, students undertaking a newsroom internship at a local community radio station overwhelmingly favoured male sources from “hegemonic” groups.

The news

Despite the issues raised, it is somewhat reductive to attribute the overrepresentation of non-Indigenous and white voices in community radio news to student and volunteer journalists alone. These findings, and the producers of the news themselves, are symptoms of a broader issue plaguing western journalism, as it is predominantly practiced, around the world. Journalism, as an institution developed in the west, is perhaps ill-equipped for meaningful engagement with First Nations people and issues, at least in terms of its traditional newsroom practices and within the context of Australia and other ostensibly post-colonial countries. Indeed, McQuire (2023, n.p.) critiques key journalistic principles including the “colonial notions of ‘objectivity’ and ‘balance’, which in fact are orientated towards those in authority”. There is a self-fulfilling cycle around journalists’ reliance on powerful and elite sources: it is this group with the means and resources to be easily accessible to journalists working to tight deadlines, yet often they are removed from the lived experience of what they are commenting on. Nonetheless, this flow of information from elite sources to audiences is longstanding with Gans (2004) critiquing the fact that news has become information transmitted from the elites to the audiences. Of course, one of the few institutions with the bureaucratic size and heft to attend to the insatiable appetite of the modern news cycle is that of governments (Herman and Chomsky, 1994). Given the reliance of journalists on elite sources and the overrepresentation of non-Indigenous parliamentarians (Gobbett, 2017), the findings of this research become less surprising but no less concerning.

There are unique colonialities at play in how First Nations people are represented, or not represented, in the Australian media. Wright (2016, n.p.) discusses this as part of a “storytelling war” where the Australia media is both complicit and actively engaged in reinforcing colonial oppression over Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people:

So I understood that the media had enormous power to influence public thinking and how we thought about ourselves. And it was very clear to me that the stories that Aboriginal people saw as important about ourselves—a self-defined vision of the future—hardly ever featured in the media.

Community broadcasting, through both its legislative obligations, Codes of Practice and, most recently, through its Roadmap 2033 strategy, seeks to distance itself from this ‘war’ by prioritising the advancement of First Nations self-determination. Aside from the important and ground-breaking work within the First Nations community broadcasting sector, sector-wide syndicated news and current affairs coverage appears to be lagging in meaningfully addressing the overrepresentation of non-Indigenous voices. This can be seen not only in the dominance of non-Indigenous sources but also in the frequency of negative topics covered in ‘Indigenous-focused’ stories, which requires further analysis beyond the scope of this article.

The final structural factor influencing both NRN and The Wire’s overreliance on non-Indigenous sources relates to the demanding temporalities of contemporary news production. As discussed, NRN broadcasts hourly bulletins and The Wire produces one program per day, leaving limited time for meaningful and non-extractive engagement with communities and sources with lived experience. These deadlines lead to further dependence on elite sources, who are more likely to have the support of the media managers and public relations practitioners who direct and schedule interview requests, as well as orchestrate made-for-broadcast media events. Sheller (2015) has characterised the contemporary media environment as “news now”: where technologies disrupt the normal sequence of events followed by reportage and instead reporting become contemporaneous with and sometimes precedes ‘the news’ itself. This reporting environment obscures the infrastructural issues that are ubiquitous in everyday life yet are crucial contributing and framing factors of political and ethical debates (Sheller, 2015). In contrast, Jackie Huggins (1998, p. 6) observes that Aboriginal writing is both concerned with precise knowledge of history and “a sense of purpose, an urgent task on behalf of their community”. This rich nuance and purpose does not necessarily translate into the format of an hourly news bulletin.

Concluding thoughts and future directions

Media diversity has a strong deliberative effect on public discourse that promotes healthy democratic processes by exposing audiences to a broad range of voices and opinions (Just 2009; Magin et al., 2023; Moylan 2018; Napoli 1999). This may occur via distribution through, for example, a structurally diverse media landscape, or the diverse characteristics of an individual outlet or program (as is more accurately the case for broadcast journalism). Assessing media diversity through its associations with deliberative democracy emphasises its role as a conduit for information, dialogue, and public discourse through a wide range of viewpoints. Drawing on a second normative approach to media research – Anderson’s (1983) concept of the imagined community - the public sphere further remains effective because of the ways participation within it are signified, generating ‘intimate’ imagined publics, which have the potential to foster a profound sense of social belonging (Harrison 2016) as listeners imagine themselves listening alongside others like themselves. Kenix (2015) describes this as a mediated construction of national identity. In this sense, for members of the public to feel they have a place in society (in the public domain), their participation in public life needs to be mediated through being seen, or in the case of audio broadcasts, heard.

Naming the world on behalf of others is considered an act of oppression by Allen and Bruce (2017, p. 227-239), who claim – in the context of their work in New Zealand - “if we truly seek change, we must encourage real dialogue between producers of news and the people of South Auckland”. If community radio, anywhere in the world, is serious about its commitment to fostering the voices of First Nations people, their voices need to be heard in its most prominent programming. When this doesn’t happen, First Nations knowledge and perspectives are neglected. Compounding the negative impacts of this on First Nations audiences, non-Indigenous peoples are also denied vital contextual and cultural understandings of the lands on which they live. Australian community radio’s “hierarchies of attention” (Dreher and Waller 2022: p.1680) evident in our findings maintain an Anglo-Centric national identity. By applying a critical whiteness framework to our analysis, we have focused on ‘how 'whiteness’ functions as a socially constructed site of privilege' (Love and Tilley 2013: p. 177). Dyer (2017, p.9) reminds us that the power of whiteness is reproduced ‘regardless of intention, power differences and goodwill'. It takes more than good intentions (or a Roadmap) to address white dominance in community media. As Watego (2021, p. 84) writes, “it is at the site of the story that such work must be undertaken”.

The implications for such overwhelming whiteness are serious. As Carden (2017) notes, research overwhelmingly points to First Nations Australians positioned in media discourses as dysfunctional and disadvantaged. Hollinsworth (2005) argues that media framing of Indigenous Australians should be considered of significant influence as many non-Indigenous people have little other involvement with those communities. Similar concerns resonate in other colonised nations and – as such – the representation of First Nations voices on community radio in these regions should also be interrogated. Furthermore, while this research focused on sources, there is a need to also consider the dominant frames of First Nations stories reported on community radio. This is an identified future area of research. Returning to the Australian context, we also recognise the work of First Nations broadcasters across the country and suggest another future area of research to examine news content generated by the syndicated news services of the National Indigenous Radio Service.

To conclude, Australian community radio news and current affairs content remains relatively underexplored, particularly in relation to its governing Codes of Practice. Despite the importance of the Codes to the Australian community broadcasting sector, there is little research that explores how day-to-day content on community radio aligns with the Codes. Drawing on content analysis of two of the sectors most prominent, syndicated news and current affairs services – National Radio News (NRN) and The Wire, the findings suggest a disconnect between the values-based aims of community radio and the content that is produced on a regular basis. Applying a theoretical lens of critical whiteness, this research addresses a gap in investigations by documenting and analysing the systemic overrepresentation of non-Indigenous sources in Australian community radio news and current affairs. While there are ample and important opportunities for further research in this area, the findings of this study highlight the need for further investment to address the fundamental misalignment of current practices with the governing Codes of Practice; that is, an over-representation of non-Indigenous voices on Australian community broadcasting news and current affairs.

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 Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia Research Award (2022).

Heather Anderson

Bridget Backhaus

Notes

Author biographies

Associate Professor Heather Anderson is a media studies and journalism scholar who investigates the ways media can be used to promote social justice, specialising in community media, prison radio and alternative journalism. Heather has been a community radio practitioner since the early 1990s and currently volunteers at Meanjin (Brisbane) radio station, 4ZZZ. Her first book, Raising the Civil Dead (Peter Lang, 2012), investigates relationships between community radio and people impacted by incarceration. She is currently working on her second manuscript, People Powered Radio: Fifty years of Australian community radio station 4ZZZ, under contract with Palgrave Macmillan.

Dr Bridget Backhaus is an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow and Senior Lecturer in journalism and media studies at Griffith University, Australia. A former community radio journalist and producer, her research explores the role of community radio in social and environmental change with particular focus on issues of voice, listening, identity, and participation. Her work employs critical, participatory, and practice-led methodologies to explore the impacts and interconnections of community media within society. Bridget is the author of Polyphony: Listening to the listeners of community radio (Routledge, 2021).

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