Deep inside major news outlets across Australia, ethnic and Indigenous journalists are facing constant, quiet uphill battles daily.
For the few of us in the news industry who are not white, each day is an exercise in tongue-biting, tiptoeing, and feeling like imposters in newsrooms that are overwhelmingly white and middle class.
We carry with us stories about casual racism in the workplace, and examples of being held to different standards to our white colleagues. We are placed under more scrutiny by lobby groups and vexatious politicians and commentators whose blood pressures soar at the word “diversity” and view our very existence as politically loaded.
The media should be using recent discussions to reflect and listen to why the status quo must end.
I write this as both a journalist who has worked in local, state and national newsrooms over the past seven years, and as an Australian-Palestinian who grew up in a Muslim and Arabic-speaking household.
It is no secret that Australian newsrooms have a severe lack of cultural diversity (SBS would be an exception), but worse yet: the majority of media colleagues either do not realise it because it is their normal; they simply do not care enough because it does not affect them, or they resist any push for diversity because they are worried it will affect them.
From a purely pragmatic standpoint, having a diverse mix of people in the news industry with different worldviews, upbringings, cultures, races, languages – which accurately reflects our extremely multicultural society – creates a wider net for getting and finding important stories. Not only this, but the way stories and interviews are approached can be enriched, and the talent pool becomes far larger.
I do wonder what my own experience would be like if this industry I love was more diverse. I know, for sure, it would be more pleasant and less riddled with anxiety.
I would not be asked, as a junior reporter, to go on an undercover assignment to a mosque to eavesdrop in on a religious sermon.
I would not be the target of unofficial complaints and meetings spearheaded by groups with vested, political interests claiming that I – a Palestinian, an Arab, the daughter of refugees – was too biased to be a journalist.
I would not have had gossip spread about me by former colleagues aiming to delegitimise my standing as a reporter because of my cultural identity.
I would not be told to stop using social media because I was being watched and monitored and scrutinised, only to later read articles in the same outlet about the importance of free speech.
White reporters would not confuse me for a local resident at media conferences. I would not be asked if I was related to a Middle Eastern teenage boy facing terrorism charges while waiting for a police briefing to begin outside the boy’s raided home.
Even when I’m equipped with a notepad and the stern face of a journalist, other reporters are not used to seeing non-Anglos on the job and I do not blame them. (I always forget to play along and give interviews because I’m usually too stunned to think properly.)
I have worked and continue to work alongside some incredible people – some who have mentored me for years along the way – and this is not an indictment of any of them or those on the periphery.
This is an indictment of the culture of the news industry, which exploits and tokenises non-Anglo cultural backgrounds when it suits them but silences every other aspect of it.
It came as a shock to many last month when ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie was sacked halfway through her term.
In TV interviews with the ABC, former chairman Justin Milne said Guthrie was let go because of her leadership style.
In the days after, some unsettling things were reported in other outlets. People within the ABC had reportedly become frustrated with Guthrie, the first woman and person of colour to head the public broadcast, for being “diversity obsessed”.
This confirmed the fears of many non-white journalists. Our presence, and the presence of more people like us, were either an existential threat, a burden, and hardly a priority.
What’s there to be afraid of? A news producer recently quipped: “The most diverse thing about these newsrooms are the cleaners and security guards”.
True. My non-white media colleagues have long been mistaken for cleaners and IT consultants and caterers. There is nothing wrong with those jobs, but it highlights that the non-white, whip-smart people working in news are not the norm.
When ethnic and Indigenous journalists aren’t being confused for anything other than journalists, their views and opinions are sometimes given less merit.
One fellow journalist told me they were told not to ask cartoonist Mark Knight in an interview about his depiction of Serena Williams. This cartoon spurred international headlines and drew accusations of racism. Why shouldn’t Knight be asked about it?
Apparently, this journalist was told Knight was “a great guy and totally harmless”. But for many of us, our experiences with racism come from otherwise really nice people. Racism doesn’t exclusively come from deeply troubled people shouting at Asian and brown people on public transport.
How well can we really do our jobs when we are made to skirt around certain issues, and self-censor so we don’t fear upsetting others?
When non-white journalists aren’t busy rewriting questions and deleting innocent social media posts because of a fear we might lose our jobs, we’re being singled out.
Daily Telegraph columnist Andrew Bolt recently attacked writer Osman Faruqi, who works for ABC Life, as a “green Muslim leftist” hired to write about pickles. Imagine if this headline was about anybody else, and their religious identity was highlighted as a problem?
Then there are the attacks against Channel 10’s Project presenter Waleed Aly, or someone like Yassmin Abdel-Magied. And they’re constantly pummelled because they’re brown and black and Muslim.
It’s hard to put yourself out there. It’s hard to speak out. There were so many times I wanted to give up and get out. I am only scratching the surface, because there is no room to detail our collective experiences.
I hope to see a normalised, diverse news industry in Australia some day soon. There’s an exodus of non-white Australian reporters, who have moved to work overseas, because they are often overlooked or are sick of the discomforting, unwelcoming culture of the news industry.
It’s now time to change the standard to better reflect the fact that more than one-fifth of Australians speak a language other than English at home, or grew up in non-English speaking households. If we don’t, reporting on Australian politics and society will suffer for it.
Jennine Khalik is a Sydney-based journalist
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