Gail Phillips

This is the third study funded by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship examining the way in which Australia’s television news media represent people from different ethnic backgrounds. While the previous two studies (2005 and 2007 – see Phillips and Tapsall, 2007a, 2007b; Phillips, 2008; Phillips, 2009, forthcoming) analysed television news, the focus of this study is television current affairs. Using a similar methodology the aim was to examine the amount of content featuring people from diverse ethnic backgrounds in television current affairs and the nature of reportage.

This is the second study funded by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship examining the way in which Australia’s television news represents people from different ethnic backgrounds. The first study in 2005 was a three-city analysis (Perth, Sydney, Shepparton) which itself built on an original pilot analysis of the Perth television news services in 2001 (see Phillips and Tapsall 2007a). This 2007 study, now including a fourth centre Townsville, is therefore the third part of what has evolved into a longitudinal study examining the trends in television news between 2001 and 2007.

During the first half of 2001 a group of researchers at Murdoch University joined with Norm Taylor, former head of News and Current Affairs at the ABC, to create a methodology for analysing the shape and substance of television news. A content analysis database was devised and during a one month trial in Perth in June 2001 the television news bulletins of the five networks were collected and analysed in terms of story content; story duration; story placement in the bulletin; and bulletin structure. It was hoped that this trial would pave the way for a broader longitudinal national study comparing news services around the country. Inadvertently the researchers captured what now appears to be a bygone era, a pre- 9/11 benchmark before the War on Terror domination over the national and international news agenda. The Living in Harmony project has provided an opportunity to apply the methodology to an analysis of the amount and nature of reporting on multicultural affairs in Australia’s television news services. The original study forms a useful baseline against which to assess multiculturalism in television news. Not only can we assess the types of stories and the way they are reported; we can also pose questions such as: How much multicultural content is there in news now compared to then? Have there been changes in the sorts of multicultural stories selected and the way in which they are told? In the post 9/11 world what if anything is happening to the public face of multiculturalism as reflected in our television news? .