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Australian Mainstream Televisions, Let Us Represent Us On Our TV
It is to no one’s surprise when a study by the non-profit media diversity Australia finds that presenters, commentators and reporters on Australian television are dominantly Anglo-Celtic background (ABC News).
Although about a quarter of the Australian population is from non-European and Indigenous background, what we watch our television every day in our living room is dominantly white anglo Celtic TV presenters. From the breakfast talks about Indigenous stolen generation to diversity itself, white TV presenters will always in the frontline talking about us. We have been objectified only as a token of the first-hand interviewees from the field, and still, the issues are nonetheless in the leads of white Australian TV presenters. Not even the talks of diversity issues are appropriately ‘being represented’ in mainstream televisions.
Writing for the Guardian, Steph Harmon made it clear that it wasn’t anew fair when it came to the conversation about diversity ( The Guardian, June 2020). She got into the core of the issues by speaking to six indigenous TV industry practitioners and those of colour. Benjamin Law, TV writer and journalist, shared his thoughts of his experiences that often people of colour and Indigenous people have become accustomed to being exploited by an all-white team for the sake of revealing…
