Cirrus@Austlit

'For too long Australia's media has failed to communicate Aboriginal political aspirations. This unique study of key Aboriginal initiatives seeking self-determination and justice reveals a history of media procrastination and denial.

A team of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal researchers examine 45 years of media responses to these initiatives, from the 1972 Larrakia petition to the Queen seeking land rights and treaties, to the desire for recognition expressed in the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart. This analysis exposes how the media frames stories, develops discourses, and supports deeper historical narratives that corrode and undermine the intent and urgency of Aboriginal aspirations, through approaches ranging from sympathetic stalling to patronising parodies.

This book can be used by media professionals to improve their practices, by Aboriginal communities to test media truth-telling and by anyone seeking to understand how Aboriginal desires and hopes have been expressed, and represented, in recent Australian political history.'

'When the Black Lives Matter movement re-emerged powerfully this year, it encouraged a cultural reckoning about how Black stories are told, reaching deep into Australia’s mainstream media. Once more, research showed just how unselfconsciously white Australian media is.

Our study of 45 years of mainstream print news reportage of Aboriginal self-determination found the media overwhelming reports from and assumes a white standpoint.

Published in a book titled Does the media fail Aboriginal political aspirations? 45 years of news media reporting of key political moments, our findings signal that the media’s problems go deeper than representation.

A podcast series based on the book has now been released. In this five-part series, titled Black Stories Matter, we bring together media researchers, historians, policy makers, a former Aboriginal Affairs minister and members of the growing cohort of Aboriginal journalists, to discuss how we can disrupt the negative patterns of the past.

'June this year marked the fortieth anniversary of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. The first parade, in 1978, was brutally attacked by police – a response that sparked a very public stoush over the rights of LGBTIQ people and the right to protest. The 78ers, as the first protesters are now known, won a stunning victory: most of the charges were dropped, and the right to demonstrate was secured in New South Wales. Yet, as the recent ABC historical drama Riot accurately depicts, Gay Liberation groups – the first wave of Australia’s LGBTIQ movement – had been active for nearly a decade before the first Mardi Gras. In fact, by the late 1970s, gay liberationists were facing a religious backlash against the impressive gains they had made.' (Introduction)