Diversity
Reporting on LGBTQIA+ issues
On November 30, 2021, MEAA released Guidelines for Reporting LGBTQIA+ Issues.[i] The new guidelines, endorsed by the National Media Section committee, were developed by the MEAA Ethics Committee and union activists, with input from members and peak community groups.
Like the Guidelines on Reporting Hate Speech and Extremism[ii], the new guidelines sit alongside the MEAA Journalist Code of Ethics.[iii] The code states that journalists should not “place unnecessary emphasis on personal characteristics including race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, sexual orientation, family relationships, religious belief or physical or intellectual disability”.
The project to produce the guidelines reflected a wider goal for MEAA to work as a progressive force for social change and to protect the rights and freedoms of everyday Australians through our campaigns across the industries we represent.[iv]
The population of LGBTQIA+ people is large and diverse and is represented by a wide array of groups, communities and individuals with different ways of identifying and expressing their specific gender identities, sexualities or sex characteristics. All however share common experiences with prejudice, trauma and discrimination. This hurt is sometimes worsened by disrespectful media reporting.
Community representatives urged MEAA’s guidelines to be comprehensive and support the spectrum of LGBTQIA+ people by recommending the use of preferred terms for specific sexualities, gender identities or sex characteristics; to provide suggested approaches to interviewing and storytelling; legal and ethical considerations, and links to additional resources.
The groups included:
- ACON
- Black Rainbow
- Transcend Australia
- Intersex Human Rights Australia
- Australian Asexuals
- First Nations Rainbow
- Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations.
MEAA adopted the term LGBTQIA+ with the support of the community groups, as a common umbrella term for people with a wide range of diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions and sex characteristics. MEAA appreciated that there are different ways of identifying and the term is simply used as a starting point for a richly diverse spectrum of people with a range of gender identities, cultures, backgrounds, sexualities, orientations, and sex characteristics.
There are two documents that form the guidelines, a two-page factsheet and the 13-page guidelines booklet. The guidelines will also inform the work of the MEAA Ethics Committee, a group of elected volunteers that works to promote and protect ethical practice amongst the professional journalists who belong to MEAA.
The guidelines are available for journalists who have questions about covering an issue or topic they may not have encountered. The broad principle is to encourage journalists to recognise the rights and freedoms of all lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, asexual and all other people who identify within this spectrum represented by the rainbow flag, and to encourage respectful and ethical editorial coverage of the issues they face.
The aim is to provide a range of tools to help journalists produce ethical reporting that is guided by MEAA’s Journalist Code of Ethics.
The guidelines follow the successful introduction of the Reporting Hate Speech and Extremism guidelines in 2020, which helped journalists navigate ways to report on race and to handle extremist content in their day-to-day news reporting.
First Nations
MEAA’s strategic plan requires the union to better reflect the nation. MEAA’s key policy-making body, the Federal Council of elected officials, resolved in 2018 to develop a reconciliation action plan (RAP) and followed up by expanding the project in 2020. The RAP would improve MEAA’s engagement with First Nations members and communities. “We seek to demonstrate that the union is dedicated to meaningful and durable engagement with First Australians and will work to advance and respect their interests.”
On June 30, 2021, MEAA formally adopted its Reconciliation Action Plan.[v] Announcing the implementation of the plan, MEAA Federal President Simon Collins said: “Our members tell stories and bring them to life — through performance and in the media. An indispensable part of our story telling is the history and experience of First Nations people. As we know, it is a history marked largely by dispossession and ignorance of their lived experience.
“MEAA openly acknowledges these facts,” Collins said. “Acknowledgement of Australia’s First Nations history is a valuable part of the reconciliation process. It is equally important — if not more so — that the union act on its principles and change the way it operates to represent and project the undeniably immense talents of First Nations members and others in the artistic and media communities.”
In recent times, MEAA has also established an Indigenous Caucus (ICMEAA), improved First Nations representation on its key Section Committees, and has provided support for the launch of the National Aboriginal Press Club.
Collins said: “Although these are critical steps, to properly acknowledge history and open ourselves up to overdue change, the union’s principal governing body, Federal Council committed to the development of a Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP). This RAP represents both a solidification of our efforts to date and critically, the new steps we will take to engage and represent our First Nations members. These steps include education of union staff, changes to union protocols and practices in how we do business and measuring the progress we make,” Collins said.
A RAP Working Group was established to steer the implementation of the RAP and ensure MEAA enacts its commitments. The RAP will be in operation for 12 months to June 30, 2022, when a more detailed RAP will come into operation with extended commitments in areas of operation and community engagement.
“This RAP sets tangible goals and obliges the union to think about the way it carries out its work and how we can make changes to further respect the reconciliation process and extend our appeal to First Australians working in the four areas of work we represent,” MEAA said.
MEAA continues to encourage journalists to study the Media Diversity Australia’s Handbook on reporting on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and Issues which is to assist newsrooms covering Indigenous affairs and includes a contacts list. MEAA also reminds its members to report ethically on First Nations people and communities.
Diversity in the newsroom
MEAA has begun inserting diversity clauses in the enterprise agreements being negotiated between MEAA members and their employers. To date, diversity clauses have been included in agreements with The Guardian and The Conversation and negotiations are underway at Nine Publishing.
MEAA has also worked with Media Diversity Australia (MDA), a national not-for-profit organisation led by journalists and media professionals. Established in 2017, MDA champions cultural diversity in Australian journalism and news media.
In the 2021 press freedom report, MEAA acknowledged a report produced by Media Diversity Australia, Who Gets to Tell Australian Stories, that showed there is still a long way to go before the people reporting and presenting news and television is representative of the broader Australian population. The report found that just six per cent of television news and current affairs reporters have a non-European background.
MEAA provided funding for the project, which was conducted over 12 months by researchers from four universities. The final report was released on August 17, 2020. It confirmed that Australian television news is still dominated by white, Anglo-Celtic faces. Key findings included:
- Seventy-five per cent of presenters, commentators and reporters have an Anglo-Celtic background while only 4.7 per cent have a non-European background and 1.2 per cent are Indigenous, as measured by frequency of appearance on screen in news and current affairs broadcasts.
- In a survey of 300 television journalists, more than 70 per cent rated the representation of culturally diverse men and women in the media industry as either poor or very poor.
- Seventy-seven per cent of respondents with culturally diverse backgrounds believe their backgrounds are a barrier to career progression.
- One hundred per cent of free-to-air television national news directors have an Anglo-Celtic background (and they are all male), and 35 out of 39 board members of Australian free-to-air television are Anglo-Celtic.
MEAA Media said: “This report tells us that opportunities in journalism for people from a non-European or Indigenous background are far less than for people from an Anglo-Celtic background. Twenty-four per cent of the Australian population is either from a non-European or Indigenous background, but the proportion of television news reporters or presenters is half that. If not for the existence of SBS/NITV, these figures would be even worse.
“In a modern, culturally and racially diverse Australia, those who interpret or report the news should reflect those they are reporting on and those who watch their bulletins. Australian television networks are seriously letting down their audiences by not having more diverse talent on screen. This results in reporting about sensitive issues involving race and religion being filtered through a single, white Anglo-Saxon perspective, consciously or unconsciously reinforcing misunderstandings, stereotypes and prejudices.
The MDA report contained several practical recommendations that would make inroads on the lack of diversity at little or no financial cost to television networks.[vi]
Reporting disability
In November 2021, Media Diversity Australia released its Disability Reporting Handbook to assist journalists report on various communities with disability.[vii] The handbook was produced by a team of media professionals with experience of living with disability, in collaboration with peak disabled people’s organisations and diversity advocates. “In designing and writing this handbook, we made sure we lived by the golden rule: nothing about us without us.”
The Disability Discrimination Commissioner, Dr Ben Gauntlett, writing in the foreword to the handbook, said; “The portrayal of people with disability in the media is critical to ensuring people with disability are included in society now and in the future. People with disability are diverse and the nature of disability is diverse too. However, in a time poor society where there is variable knowledge about people with disability, it can be easy to overlook the importance of language, imagery and storytelling.
“Journalists can change lives by asking questions that enable issues of concern to be brought to the foreground of public debate. They can also change lives by carefully reporting on issues in an inclusive manner. How a person is referred to in a story, or dealt with in collating and researching a story, matters.
“Similarly, the willingness of members of the media to actively look for stories concerning people with disability is important. Investigative journalism based on rigorous research has led to many changes in disability policy.
“At a time of great policy upheaval and potential change, it is imperative that journalists engage with issues of concern for people with disability and their friends and family. Interviewing people with disability can give great insights in a story and needs to be encouraged. The Disability Reporting Handbook will hopefully make reporting on disability related issues more prevalent,” Gauntlett wrote.
[i] “MEAA Guidelines for Reporting on LGBTQIA+ Issues”, MEAA, November 30, 2021 https://www.meaa.org/meaa-media/code-of-ethics/lgbtqia-guidelines/
[ii] “MEAA Guidelines on Reporting Hate Speech and Extremism”, MEAA, https://www.meaa.org/meaa-media/code-of-ethics/hate-speech-guidelines/
[iii] “MEAA Journalist Code of Ethics”, MEAA https://www.meaa.org/meaa-media/code-of-ethics/
[iv] “MEAA Guidelines for Reporting on LGBTQIA+ Issues”, MEAA, November 30, 2021 https://www.meaa.org/meaa-media/code-of-ethics/lgbtqia-guidelines/
[v] “Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance — Reflect Reconciliation Action Plan July 2021–July 2022”, MEAA, https://www.meaa.org/download/meaa-2021-reconciliation-action-plan/
[vi] “Australian media must do better on diversity”, MEAA, August 17, 2020 https://www.meaa.org/mediaroom/australian-media-must-do-better-on-diversity/
[vii] “Disability Reporting Handbook, Media Diversity Australia, November 2021 https://www.mediadiversityaustralia.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/MDA-Disability-Reporting-Handbook_FINAL-V5_21112021.pdf
