Gail Phillips

Vision Australia Radio (VAR) is part of the Australian Radio for the Print Handicapped (RPH) community radio network providing a radio reading service to listeners with a vision impairment. Like mainstream media, it faces the challenge of ensuring the service is fit for purpose in the digital age. There is little preexisting research on the behaviour and interests of the vision-impaired as a discrete audience demographic. This paper reports on a survey of listeners to VAR in Perth, Western Australia, which gives an insight into their current listening habits and identifies some of the challenges in meeting their future needs.

During the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008, the financial press attracted criticism for its coverage: specifically that it did not provide any forewarnings to the general public; that it lacked sufficient scepticism when reporting on financial and economic trends; and that reporters were too close to the sources they used for information. This paper argues the GFC represents only the latest manifestation of dissatisfaction with the financial press, with similar concerns being raised in previous financial crises such as the recession of the late 1990s and the Dot Com boom in 2000. The paper presents the results of a longitudinal tri-nation quantitative and qualitative content analysis of the reportage in three mainstream newspapers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia across three decades, along with industry insights provided by interviews with reporters in each of the countries studied. The interviews and empirical evidence indicate there has been a decline in mainstream financial journalism standards since the 1980s, as the media have faced increasing institutional, ideological, and industrial pressures.

Purpose – This paper aims to demonstrate how action research methodologies can help to define and clarify the pedagogical role of the supervisor in production-based research (PBR). A major challenge in supervising practice-related research is trying to disentangle and articulate the theory embedded within practical projects. In journalism, which is still a relatively new discipline in academe, supervisors and students are often operating in under-theorised areas with no pre-existing theoretical roadmap. Action research has shown itself to be a useful methodology for structuring and explaining practice-related research, which in journalism would encompass PBR in the field. This paper shows how the action research paradigm is equally useful in describing and clarifying the supervisor’s role in these sorts of projects. Design/methodology/approach – The paper looks first at practice-related research and the main challenges for candidates and supervisors in trying to align PBR with academic paradigms. Using examples from the author’s experience in supervising journalism research, it then illustrates how the main supervision tasks of project management, research mentoring and the writing-up process fit into the action research model. Findings – In reflecting on the dynamics between candidates and supervisors in PBR, this paper shows how supervision of production-based PhDs is a dynamic research process in itself, presenting opportunities for pedagogical reflection. Originality/value – The paper helps to clarify the role of the supervisor in this specialist research area which is still trying to establish itself within academe. It provides one way for supervisors to conceptualise their experiences and so contribute to a corpus of knowledge on which others can draw and build. By showing how the action research methodology applies to the supervision process in production-based research (PBR), this paper articulates a way for supervisors to understand and manage their role in this still-evolving research area. Building on previous scholarship and applying this knowledge to journalism production, the paper shows how action research may provide a way of addressing many of the issues and dilemmas others have encountered and identified in their pedagogical practice.

A recent study of ethnic diversity in Australia's television news showed that diversity of race, culture and religion is largely absent from the news services, unless people from ethnic minorities are posing a social problem of some kind. A parallel study of Australia's nightly current affairs programs has yielded similar results: like news, they represent Australia as an 'Anglo' nation. When ethnic minorities are featured, they tend to occupy peripheral roles, and where they are allowed a central role, it is usually to be shown as threatening and menacing to the Anglo mainstream. The industry codes of practice explicitly state the standards that should apply in reporting on race, culture and religion, yet only the public broadcaster, the ABC, follows the guidelines in the representation of diversity. The reporting practices on the commercial stations deliberately or unwittingly encourage a sense of racial hierarchy in which the Anglo dominates.

Asbestos presents an ongoing health disaster worldwide. First through mining and manufacturing, and now through workplaces and the home, exposure to asbestos is presenting a public health hazard that will continue well into the 21st century. Yet it is a hidden epidemic with litigation often silencing the voices that could attest to the destructive impact of what was once called the ‘magic mineral’. This paper describes a unique collaboration between journalists, doctors and public health researchers where journalistic techniques are used to bring the peoples’ stories of suffering and caring to public attention. The project illustrates the value of interdisciplinary collaboration as well as demonstrating how journalistic activity can be the subject of legitimate academic research. The outcome is a website, with three functions: first, as an historical archive of asbestos stories through audio and video interviews with asbestos diseases sufferers, their families and carers; second, as a one-stop-shop for public health information about asbestos risk where journalism skills are employed to translate often complex information into accessible language and formats; and third, as the nucleus for a future online community where patients and doctors can interact and experiment with more collaborative models of medical and public health interventions.

The nightly news on Australia's television screens presents a view of Australia and Australians that is different from what most of us encounter in our daily lives. This paper reports on the results of two content analyses of television news conducted in 2005 and 2007 which demonstrate that instead of a range of peoples and cultures, we see mainly Anglo faces, projecting an archetypal image of a 'white Australia' that is more applicable to the 1950s than it is to today. More disturbingly, when we do encounter people from manifestly different racial, cultural or religious backgrounds, they tend to be featured as victims, or as social deviants, or as in some way 'unAustralian'. This raises questions about current journalistic practice and suggests that in order for television news to present Australians with a true reflection of their 'real' world there need to be changes in the processes of newsgathering and storytelling.

It is at times of stress that the media come under particular scrutiny amid fears that they have the capacity to make a bad situation worse. Over time, this has led researchers to focus on the treatment of racial minorities, women, "deviant" groups and terrorism. Since 9/11 and the War on Terror, a major focus of such research has been on the portrayal of Islam and Muslim communities. These studies have shown that the modern business of media and the processes and practices of journalism in the digital age impact on the nature of reportage in ways that can often disadvantage minority groups. The following analysis examines Australia’s television news services in order to explore if and how the representation of ethnic minority groups differs from the representation of the "Anglo" majority. Examining both the quantity and the quality of television news content over a two-week period, the study not only looks at what was reported, but also how it was reported. In this way, it attempts to show how the characteristics of the medium impact on the nature of the portrayal of people from diverse ethnic backgrounds. The dominant representations of ethnic minorities as "mad", "bad", "sad" or "other" sends a subtle but unmistakable message to the viewer about who is "them" and who is "us" in the wider Australian community.

Despite declining audiences television continues to be the primary source of news for the Australian public, yet no tool has been developed to regularly measure and interpret just what the nation's news services actually deliver. Are the news services as local as they say they are? What is the amount and nature of their coverage of world events? What kind of news do they include and how are stories treated? How much original material is there and how much duplication across services? Are news agendas changing over time? Australia currently lacks the means of providing credible answers to these questions at a time when the quality of its news services is subject to multiple threats, both commercial and technological. The aim of this study was to develop an authoritative and comprehensive method for analyzing the shape and substance of television news. It was hoped through this process to create a content analysis database and a methodology appropriate for the provision of an ongoing assessment and comparison of news output across the five Australian television networks. The results of the first two surveys show that Australia's television news services are changing. News agendas are becoming more homogenized, with greater reliance by all services on predictable and safe sources. Local coverage is reducing, stories are tending to be more sensationalist, and hard news is being displaced by soft news. The danger is that the tactics aimed at boosting dwindling audiences may in fact be actively contributing to audience decline by turning off the core demographics the networks need to ensure long-term survival.