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The Dynamics of News and Indigenous Policy in Australia

The Dynamics of News and Indigenous Policy in Australia

Kerry McCallum | Liss Waller

(2017)

Abstract

Despite intense concern among academics and advocates, there is a deeply felt absence of scholarship on the way media reporting exacerbates rather than helps to resolve policy problems. This book offers rich insights into the news media’s role in the development of policy in Australia, and explores the complex, dynamic and interactive relationship between news media and Australian Indigenous affairs. Spanning a twenty-year period from 1988 to 2008, Kerry McCallum and Lisa Waller critically examine how Indigenous health, bilingual education and controversial legislation were portrayed through public media. The Dynamics of News and Indigenous Policy in Australia provides evidence of Indigenous people being excluded from policy and media discussion, as well as using the media to their advantage. To that end, the book poses the question: just how far was the media manipulating the national conversation? And how far was it, in turn, being manipulated by those in power? A decade after the Australian government introduced the controversial 2007 Northern Territory Emergency Response Act, McCallum and Waller offer a ground-breaking look at the media’s role in Indigenous issues and asks: to what extent did journalism exacerbate policy issues, and how far were their effects felt in Indigenous communities?
"This book provides one of the most thorough, contextually rich, and clearly explained accounts of the rapid slide backwards in Indigenous affairs, from self-determination and reconciliation to intervention, over the last two decades."
Dr. Christina Spurgeon

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Cover Cover
Half Title i
Title iii
Copyright iv
Contents v
Preface vii
Acknowledgements ix
Part I: Setting the Scene 1
Chapter 1: Introduction: Media dynamics and policy intractability 3
Chapter 2: Policy histories and discursive environments 21
Part II: Media Coverage of Indigenous Affairs 35
Chapter 3: Race, indigeneity and the media: Theoretical trajectories in Australian studies of Indigenous media representation 37
Chapter 4: News from another country: Remote Indigenous reporting for mainstream audiences 57
Chapter 5: The Australian and Indigenous affairs 81
Part III: Indigenous Health Policy 103
Chapter 6: Key moments in Indigenous health policy, 1988–2008 105
Chapter 7: Framing Indigenous health in the Australian news media 119
Chapter 8: Policymakers’ media-related practices and ‘new paternalism’ in Indigenous health 165
Part IV: Bilingual Education 193
Chapter 9: Bilingual education: A case study 195
Chapter 10: Saving bilingual education: Media-related practices of Indigenous policy advocates 203
Chapter 11: A game of mirrors: News, policy and bilingual education 227
Chapter 12: Conclusion: Change and continuity in media and Indigenous affairs 259
References 277
Index 309
Back Cover Back Cover