Gail Phillips, Murdoch University;
Suellen Tapsall, Murdoch University

• Introduction
• Literature review
• Method and design
• Content Analysis
• Conclusion
• References
   
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Content Analysis

The news environment

The two-week news survey covered the period 7 to 20 November 2005. On the international front one of Indonesia’s most wanted terrorists Azahari blew himself up as he was about to be arrested in Indonesia. Indonesian police also captured three suspects wanted for the October Bali bomb attacks. Three hotels in Jordan were ripped apart by suicide bombers. Shiite mosques were the target of further suicide bombings in Iraq. Paris was experiencing violent riots as disaffected youth, mostly from African and Arabic backgrounds, protested at their neglect by the Chirac government. The world was attempting to marshal aid in the aftermath of the earthquake which devastated Pakistani Kashmir. World leaders went to Seoul for the APEC summit meeting, which also brought PM John Howard face to face with Singaporean PM Lee as local concerns over the fate of Australian convicted drug-trafficker Van Nguyen were growing in advance of his scheduled execution in a Singapore gaol.

On the domestic front the first week was dominated by the counter-terrorism raids in Sydney and Melbourne and the arrest of 17 men suspected of plotting a terrorist attack in Australia. The raids coincided with a particularly challenging time for the Howard government which was in the middle of a parliamentary wrangle over its attempt to introduce more stringent anti-terrorism legislation and tougher anti-union laws. Melbourne man Van Nguyen was awaiting the death penalty in Singapore amidst growing public concern. Vivien Solon was being repatriated from the Philippines following the revelation about her illegal deportation from Australia. Michelle Leslie, another Australian accused of possessing drugs, this time in Bali, was awaiting the court’s verdict. The Baxter detention centre was set alight by inmates. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Adelaide. The country was experiencing World Cup fever as the Socceroos faced Uruguay. And the world’s biggest airliner, the A3-80, paid a visit to Australia.

Bulletin overview

The news services vary in length and time of broadcast. Channels Seven and Nine have a half hour bulletin at 1800, though in Shepparton Nine has an hour-long bulletin Monday to Friday starting at 1800 with the Melbourne Channel Nine news tacked on to a half hour WIN News regional bulletin. Channel Ten has a one hour bulletin from 1700 to 1800. The ABC half hour evening bulletin is at 1900. SBS evening news is at 1830.

The SBS bulletin is networked without alteration around the nation. As would be expected from its brief (‘to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians, and, in doing so, reflect Australia’s multicultural society’ (SBS 2002) it has the most international focus and otherwise concentrates on stories of national relevance. The other services take their local branding seriously and on regular newsdays feature a high proportion of locally-generated stories (Table 1).

Table 1: Local content as proportion of total news for each city

It is worth noting that Nine and Seven exceed Ten and the ABC in the amount of local content in their half-hour bulletins – an important part of their branding as services that ‘belong’ to their host city. The higher proportion of local news in Perth’s Seven compared to Nine may be one reason for its consistently stronger performance in that city. Another point of interest is the strong showing of Shepparton’s Nine service. This is because it includes the half hour of regional news which by definition focuses on local stories (this is a marked improvement on the poor state of local content noted by Helen Wilson in 2002 and follows action by the then Australian Broadcasting Authority in 2003 to increase local content in regional centres. See ABA 2004). This will be particularly relevant later on in relation to content with a multicultural focus.

Apart from local content, the rest of the bulletins are composites compiled from each service’s network pool of national and international material. This material is either featured without alteration or else edited in order to tailor it to suit the time constraints of the individual bulletin. The proportion of national content is shown in the following table:

Table 2: National content as proportion of total news for each city plus SBS

The ABC is the clear leader in relation to the proportion of national news – a reflection of its traditional concentration on news from Canberra as part of its interpretation of its role as the national broadcaster of record (see for example Petersen1999:60).

The city/service breakdown for international content is shown in Table 3. It is clear that a full two-thirds of the SBS bulletin is devoted to international news, the last third to national content. Ten has a high proportion of international content, essential to fill its hour-long format. The Seven and Nine services in Sydney carry more international news than their sister stations in Shepparton and Perth.

Table 3: International content as proportion of total news for each city plus SBS

It is worth noting that amount and type of international news featured in Australian bulletins has changed since the original news content study of 2001. Tables 4 and 5 show the Top Ten countries for both 2001 and 2005. In the 2001 survey period the US and the UK were the main sources for international news, including the quirky stories so often used as fillers and mood-lighteners at the end of bulletins. The UK news was dominated by the General Election and the impending release of the teenage killers of toddler James Bulger. US news was focused on the execution of the Oklahoma bomber and the visit to Europe by US President George W. Bush. The main news out of the Middle East concerned a suicide bombing in Israel and the failing peace process. Nepal is in the list because of the massacre of the Nepalese royal family.

Table 4: Top Ten Countries 2001

In 2005 not only is international news more prominent in the bulletin, but also the ‘top 10’ of the most featured countries has been transformed because of the impact of the War on Terror. The focus on Indonesia’s battle against its own home-grown terrorists culminating in the suicide death of its most wanted suspect Azahari pushes it to the top of the list. Pictures of suicide bombings in Jordan and Iraq and violence on the streets of Paris by disaffected African and Arab youths dominate the screens while the world leaders gather in Seoul for the APEC summit. The US, though now in second position, nevertheless remains a major source for international news as the major player in the War on Terror. (Uruguay features prominently because of the Uruguay/Australia World Cup Soccer match)

Table 5: Top Ten Countries 2005

One final point to note in relation to general content: as the most outlying state, Perth tends to diverge frequently from the agendas followed by the Eastern States services. As a result the Eastern States stations will focus more on Eastern States news where Perth will prefer a local story. This means the bulletins in Sydney and Shepparton tend to be more closely aligned with each other than each may be with Perth. Each centre also shows evidence of a wider regional brief. New South Wales may feature a story from Queensland ignored by the others. Similarly Shepparton may include stories from Adelaide or Tasmania.

Story topic, type and tone

The 2001 study analysed news content according to content and type– in other words the topic and the storytelling convention used. It utilised a system of 20 content categories:

Table 6: Content categories

These 20 categories were themselves subsequently grouped together into broad story types that gave a better sense of the flavour of the news content. These were:

• Blood & Guts: Emergencies/Disasters, Courts & Justice and Crime.
• Clever Country: Education & Schools and Technology & Science.
• Fun & Games: Arts & Culture, Leisure & Tourism, Personalities & Entertainment and Sports News.
• Money & Work: Business & Finance and Work & Industry
• Power & Policy: Politics, Military & Diplomatic, Media & Communications and Transport Issues
• Social Matters: Social Issues, Environment, Health & Medicine, Consumer Affairs and Religion & Faith.

Table 7 shows the 2001 category list in descending order according to numbers of items and percentage of news (because weekend bulletins have a high proportion of sports news which could skew the result, this table is based on weekdays only).

Table 7: 2001 News content by content category (Perth)

The 2001 results confirmed the domination in television news of the visceral over the cerebral. Stories on ‘Courts & Justice’ were the most highly represented in the total ‘all networks news’ coverage. Combined with ‘Crime’ they accounted for over a quarter of all bulletin news content. The second highest content category across all networks was ‘Emergencies & Disasters’. Table 8 shows the same dataset for the 2005 three-city survey. (This table is based on the weekday bulletins from the second week when there was a full set of data for all services),

Table 8: 2005 News content by content category (three cities)

Crime is now top of the list, just nudging Courts and Justice into second place, and when combined these categories now account for 34.94% of the total content. Obviously in a week still dominated by the unique event of the counter-terror raids in Sydney and Melbourne of the week before this may be a deviation from the daily norm. However even without this content the War on Terror has led to much more of a focus on violence and the threat of violence, both domestically and around the world, than in previous years. Comparing just the ‘Top Ten’ the news in 2005 is more serious than in 2001.

Table 9 compares the Top Five categories across all stations in the 2001 Perth survey (weekdays only), while Table 10 shows how the Top Five looked in Perth four years later.

Table 9: 2001 Top Five content categories by station (Perth)

Table 10: 2005 Top Five content categories by station (Perth only)

In 2001 while Courts and Justice featured prominently on all services, the public broadcasters had the strongest focus on Politics while the commercial stations focused more on Crime and Health and Medicine. In 2005 Crime is more prominent in all the news agendas, including those of the public broadcasters. The public broadcasters retain their focus on Politics while the commercial stations focus more on Emergencies and Disasters. The commercial stations also leaven their bulletins with more light content of one sort or another (Sports News, Health and Medicine, Personalities and Entertainment).

The way stories are reported – in other words the storytelling convention that is adopted – adds another dimension to television news. Table 11 shows the total stories by story type for 2001.

Table 11: 2001 Stories by story type (Perth)

The ‘Blood & Guts’ story type dominated the news content making up 38% of all news that went to air. Table 12 compares the distribution of story types across the stations in 2001.

Table 12: 2001 Breakdown of story type by station (Perth)

The commercial channels used more ‘Blood & Guts’ stories, with Seven (45%) the highest, in comparison with the public broadcasters who averaged around 35%. However the public broadcasters dominate the ‘Power & Policy’ grouping with the ABC (with its concentration on politics) recording double the proportion of the commercial channels for this category, and SBS three times the proportion because of its concentration on ‘Military & Diplomatic’ items. The ‘Clever Country’ type grouping attracted the fewest stories - a little over 2% of all news.

In the 2005 survey (Table 13 – based on the weekday bulletins from the second week when there was a full set of data for all services), ‘Blood and Guts’ still dominates, but now the percentage has risen, constituting 43.06% of total content. Maybe to compensate, the other main difference is the increase in ‘Fun and Games’ stories from 8.70% to 14.12% of total content. However the data is skewed by the high figure for Shepparton, where its half hour of local WIN News preceding the Melbourne Nine bulletin tends to focus on lighter local stories.

Table 13: 2005 Stories by story type (three cities)

Table 14 shows the 2005 breakdown by stations (based on the weekday bulletins from the second week when there was a full set of data for all services).

Table 14: 2005 Breakdown of story type by station (three cities)

The ABC bulletins have more in common with each other across the cities than the commercial bulletins, in particular the Shepparton commercial services which tend to have more of a focus on ‘Fun and Games’ and ‘Clever Country’ and less on ‘Blood and Guts’ content than the other cities.

The commercial skew towards ‘Blood and Guts’ persists, as does the public broadcasters’ skew towards ‘Power and Policy’, and the commercial stations have more stories in the ‘Fun and Games’ category.

SBS has noticeably fewer stories in the ‘Blood and Guts’ and ‘Money and Work’ categories, but leads the way with ‘Power and Policy’ stories.

If the Perth all-station figures are compared across both surveys this shows how the ABC has lifted its ‘Blood and Guts’ content from 34.37% to 35.83% while ‘Power and Policy is up from 23.76% to 30.77%. Channel Nine now has more ‘Fun and Games’ stories compared to the first survey (up from 12.62% to 17.04%) while ‘Social Issues’ is down from 20.89% to 15.53%. Channel Seven has bumped up its ‘Blood and Guts’ content from 45.63% to 50.69%. ‘Money and Work’ is also up from 10.58% to 13.48% while ‘Social Issues’ is down from 22.41% to 17.94%. Channel Ten shows some striking realignments in content, with ‘Blood and Guts’ up from 37.22% to 53.22% and ‘Social Issues’ down from 25.80% to 9.68%.

Multicultural implications

In the 2001 study there was no attempt to focus on multicultural stories, which were subsumed within the broader social issues category. National Steering Committee members on the Living in Harmony project suggested this accorded well with perceptions of multiculturalism as an issue in pre- 9/11 2001. Following on from the positivism associated with reporting multiculturalism in the late 1980s/early 1990s (when most major newsrooms had a ‘multicultural’ roundsperson) and the politically-correct confronting impact of the One Nation phenomenon in the later 1990s, Australia’s cultural diversity was an accepted (while still sometimes uncomfortable) factual non-event (in 2001 news terms). In the 2005 study these stories were tagged so it was possible to extract data relating specifically to the multicultural component. Table 15 compares the amount of multicultural content across all services.

Table 15: Multicultural content – 2005

The data shows SBS the clear network leader when it comes to the total amount of multicultural news in its bulletins. However when multicultural news is viewed as a proportion of bulletin length Sydney Nine and Sydney Seven are close behind. Given that the Ten Network stations and Shepparton Nine have hour-long bulletins, it would be expected that they would have a higher percentage of Multicultural news, but it is clear that the extra half hour does not result in a proportional increase in Multicultural news content.

Tables 16 and 17 compare the breakdown of content categories for multicultural and non-multicultural stories.

Table 16: 2005 Top 5 content categories for multicultural stories

Table 17: 2005 Top 5 content categories for non-multicultural stores

The multicultural stories are more concentrated in the categories that could be described as ‘serious’ as opposed to ‘lifestyle’ or ‘entertainment’. Crime is the dominant category for multicultural stories and importantly, it represents 31.27% of all multicultural news. Compare this with non-multicultural stories where crime stories constitute 7.27% of all news, and 10.41% of the non-multicultural total. This is an illuminating illustration of the extent to which news is delivering negative messages about culturally diverse communities.

When we examine story type this trend is even more in evidence. Tables 18 and 19 show the percentages of story types for multicultural and non-multicultural stories.

Table 18: 2005 multicultural stories by story type

Table 19: 2005 non- multicultural stories by story type

The ‘Blood and Guts’ group dominates in both tables, though it is significant, again, that this story type is featured in 71.22% of the multicultural stories, compared to 27.20% of non-multicultural stories. Lighter stories feature less in the multicultural table and the ‘clever country’ category not at all. Thus the story genre reinforces the negative associations already established in the content categories.

As Akbarzadeh & Smith note in their report on the representation of Islam and Muslims in the Media, ‘reporting a negative story does not always mean that it is negative’ – it is the language and construction that in the end determines whether it will be perceived as negative. (2005:14) In this study stories were assessed for tone against a positive/negative scale. The breakdown in Table 20 shows that the multicultural news is concentrated at the most negative end of the scale, with 55.52% of the stories falling on the negative side of neutral compared to 37.51% falling on the positive side.

Table 20: 2005 Multicultural stories by tone

Table 21 shows story tone in relation to specific cultural groups. This shows that it is the Muslim category which attracts the most negative portrayals, with 239 stories falling into this category, against 18 which show the community in a positive light. Even given the events of the first week of the survey focusing on the Australian counter-terrorism raids, the War on Terror has resulted in a worldwide obsession with Islam which is now a dominant feature of both international and domestic news. It is interesting that near-neighbours such as Singapore and Indonesia attract predominantly negative coverage, as does the non-specified ‘migrant community’ category. The high proportion of positive stories relating to the Vietnamese community reflect the sympathetic coverage of the grief-stricken family and friends of the Melbourne Vietnamese-Australian Van Nguyen in the days leading up to his execution in Singapore for a drug trafficking crime.

Table 21: 2005 Story tone related to specific cultural groups

In Tables 22, 23 and 24 the ‘tone types’ of Table 20 are aggregated into three broader categories (‘balanced’, ‘negative’ and ‘positive’) to compare the proportions across all services. This shows an interesting parallel between Sydney ABC and SBS who are at the top of the table in relation to balanced stories, at the bottom of the table in relation to negative stories, and also, perhaps surprisingly, near the bottom of the table in relation to positive stories. In fact Sydney ABC ranks lowest of all services in the positive category with 4.57% compared to Sydney Seven with 30.73 % positive content. Shepparton’s Ten service leads the pack in negative coverage, and is at the low end of the scale in relation to balanced and positive stories. By way of contrast, Shepparton’s Nine service, while middle of the range in the balanced and negative categories, is near the top of the table for positive stories. This is discussed further below.

Table 22: 2005 Balanced story tone - station comparison

Table 23: 2005 Negative story tone - station comparison

Table 24: 2005 Positive story tone - station comparison

Table 25 draws out the data relating specifically to the Muslim community.

Table 25: 2005 Muslim community impact by network

This clearly shows the way in which negative stories predominate on all services. The higher figures for Sydney and Shepparton (with its Melbourne composite bulletin) probably reflect the fact that the anti-terror raids were local stories in those centres. Given the nationally-networked SBS bulletin comes out of Sydney this may also explain why the proportion of negative stories is more in line with the Eastern states centres than with Perth.

The table also shows confirms what has already been noted above, that the highest number of positive stories were found on the Shepparton Nine service. In fact during the survey period the local WIN regional news was the main repository for stories which actively promoted multicultural harmony. The bulletin of 7 November features the visit of the Iraqi ambassador to Shepparton to talk to new Iraqi migrants about the issues they face as recent migrants such as replacing documents lost when thy fled Iraq. The Iraqi men who make up the audience are pictured sitting on the floor relaxed and chatting. On 17 November WIN News features a story about a pilot Settlement Project set up to ease the transition for new migrants from the Congo. The first intake, described as former schoolteachers and their families, are introduced with local community groups, churches and TAFE featured as welcoming them into their midst. On November 8, the same day that the major news services were focused on the dramatic counter-terrorism raids in Melbourne and Sydney, Shepparton contained no references at all to these events, and in fact carried a very positive story about the launch of a local Migrant Experience Centre at Bonegilla. Interviewees talk about it as a celebration of the local cultural heritage. The contrast with the tone and content of the stories on the night raids of the homes of Muslim people could not be more stark. The regional news agenda takes us back to a pre-9/11 world similar to that in the 2001 news survey where people from diverse cultural backgrounds were not to be feared and where traditional values about diversity and making migrants welcome predominate. Having said that, it is still the fact that diversity remains quarantined in a separate zone. In the general reporting of regional news the multicultural faces are invisible – the community at large is represented by Anglo faces both as spokespeople and as faces in the crowd. By way of illustration the news stories featured in the Shepparton WIN bulletin of 15 November present us with Anglo public health experts, educationalists, water experts, politicians, unionists and workers with no noticeable representation of non-Anglo communities in any of the stories.

In summary the analysis of story content, type and tone shows that multicultural news is a minority feature in our news services, it tends to associate non-Anglo groups disproportionately with crime and violence, and it is overwhelmingly negative in tone. The group which suffers most from this treatment during the period of this survey is the Muslim community. Having analysed the quantitative data we move on now to the qualitative data to show the impact of story treatment on the representation of multicultural communities.

Story treatment

In analysing television news it is important to appreciate what it is, and what it isn’t and can never be. The basic characteristic of news is that it ‘newsifies’ – as Ericson et al note
'In order to make news, journalists must interpret reality and tell stories, as opposed to simply reflecting reality or gathering facts' (1987:9). And even as they tell their stories they are subject to the constraints of the medium in which they are working so that ‘The result is not the whole truth but truth reduced to the genre capacities of the newspaper article or broadcast news item.' (ibid).

Television news tells stories with sound and pictures and aims to be both attention-grabbing and entertaining, hitting the heart as well as the head. Like any form of storytelling news storytelling inevitably conforms to ‘archetypal narratives’ (Jacobs 1996:383) and narrative patterns (see Bell 1991:147-155).. As former NBC executive Reuven Frank told his staff in a 1963 memo

Every news story should, without any sacrifice of probity or responsibility, display the attributes of fiction, of drama. It should have structure and conflict, problem and denouement, rising action and falling action, a beginning, a middle and an end. These are not only the essentials of drama; they are the essentials of narrative. (cited in Dunn 2005:144-5)

Binary oppositions lie at the heart of good storytelling so the focus inevitably is on contrast – good versus bad, black versus white – with little time for nuances or shades of grey (see Fulton 2005:229). News values determine the selection of stories (see Galtung and Ruge1965; Golding and Elliott 1979:114-23) and the top six are generally agreed to be: consequence, proximity, conflict, human interest, novelty, and prominence (Masterton and Patching 1997:15) And the high pressure news routines determine who is most likely to be heard: the easy-to-get-to and usually articulate ‘authorized knowers’ (Ericson et al 1987:32). This immediately puts minority groups at a disadvantage (van Dijk 2000: 37)

The ‘genre capacities’ of television news therefore lead to a product that we can expect to be:

• Dramatic
• Eye-catching
• Simple
• Reductionist
• Emotive rather than reflective
• Preferencing human interest over dry analysis
• Favouring the voices of authority rather than the person-in-the-street

In the following analysis we see how the combined impact of television reporting conventions and routines exacerbates the negativity already introduced through the story selection process.

What types of talent are used?

The time constraints implicit in newsgathering restrict the capacity to research widely for talent, while the medium demands ‘good’ speakers who are both knowledgeable and articulate. This has two results:

1. the news features predominantly talent who have been groomed for their role. They are articulate, present well, and look authoritative. They are generally the people who have been delegated with the task of acting as spokespeople for their particular group. They understand the conventions, are comfortable in front of the camera and have mastered the ‘30 second bite’.
2. people who don’t present in this way are at a disadvantage. If their command of English is poor, if they are ungroomed, if they are not in control of their emotions, they represent a distortion of accepted convention which impacts on how the audience may judge them. In a medium where the image is tightly controlled any hint of anarchy can make audiences feel uneasy.

Multicultural implications

The multicultural communities play by these rules and several of their designated spokespeople appear in the stories in this survey. They are besuited, well groomed, and comfortable mixing with politicians. They are in safe environments such as offices that attest to their status. They are not fazed by cameras and express their views cogently. However others present differently. They are grabbed in the street or in their homes, they may be in casual dress or in robes or veils. Their English may be poor, or heavily accented, or they may not communicate directly with us at all but require subtitles for us to understand what they are saying. All of this relates to occasions when representatives of the communities feature as talent at all. Sometimes they are ignored altogether, reduced to the status of the ‘elephant in the room’ whom everyone talks about but whose own voice is absent.

The stations show interesting differences in relation to selection of talent. Often where stories are locally sourced the stations will not only devote more time to the story but also draw in a more diverse array of talent. Unfortunately this very localism will often mean the rest of the country won’t benefit from such insights, since it is the local enhancements that are most likely to be dropped as individual news editors tailor stories to fit within their own bulletins. For example, the Victorian-based stations provided the most coverage of the Van Nguyen story as he was a local resident. Melbourne audiences therefore got more of an insight into his environment, his family and his friends than audiences in Perth who tended to see the same images of Van Nguyen’s face, his grieving mother and the concerned lawyers without the broader context (see for example Seven Shepparton 12 November, not run in the other states). As another example, on 20 November Sydney ABC ran a story about the impact on the local Muslim community of the focus on terror, with community leaders saying they felt they were being intimidated by ASIO. However the story location was a local Muslim community festival marking the end of Ramadan, full of positive images of happy community members smiling and joking, engaging in activities ranging from running foodstalls to praying with none of the ominous suggestions of ‘otherness’ that permeates the ‘terror’ stories. As a local Sydney story it did not get a run elsewhere.

How are people portrayed?

In television news the picture is the story and embeds the main features of good storytelling. This means it will seek to bring out graphically the drama, conflict and emotion inherent in any story – even if this means over-dramatising, over-stressing the conflict, exaggerating the emotion. More often than not stories are told in terms of binary oppositions – good versus bad, happy versus sad, ‘us’ versus ‘them’. The people featured in the stories are actors in a mini-drama – each is assigned a role within the plot template that applies.

Multicultural implications

In this survey people from multicultural backgrounds sit predominantly in the bad, sad and ‘them’ categories. They are often linked with illegal or criminal behaviour (the alleged Muslim Australian terrorists; the Indian-Australian wife-murderer in Perth; the Vietnamese Australian convicted drug-trafficker Van Nguyen). They are the victims of tragedy (the Philippine Australian and illegal deportee Vivian Solon; the bereaved parents of the missing toddler in Sydney). However most striking of all are the ways in which people from culturally diverse backgrounds are identified as ‘them’ rather than ‘us’. This is done in a variety of ways.

1. They dress differently, often appearing in non-Western dress. This is in contrast to the authority figures they are usually in conflict with who appear splendidly uniformed or besuited. Politicians, the military and the police often have the Australian flag flying alongside them which reinforce the schism between mainstream Australia and the ‘other’. The powerful messages sent by clothing can be appreciated by the converse situation represented by Michelle Leslie who adopted Muslim dress in an attempt to gain the court’s sympathy during her trial for drug possession in Indonesia.
2. They talk differently. They speak in accented English or else in foreign languages which require subtitles for the mainstream audience to understand them. The impact this has can be appreciated by our reaction to Abdul Nacer Benbrika who in the 14 November stories on the counter-terrorism arrests communicates with us only through a chilling transcription of a bugged conversation in which he makes threats about causing ‘maximum damage’ (all stations). The lack of any definitive information, background or commentary to set him into context makes his words all the more frightening.
3. Sometimes they don’t have a voice at all but communicate with us only through intermediaries. The accused terrorists, who appear as a succession of blurred faces or sullen court sketches, speak through their lawyers; Vivian Solon is a silent image whose feelings and thoughts are relayed via designated representatives; Van Nguyen, locked in a Singapore gaol, couldn’t be expected to speak for himself, but even his mother is silent, relying on lawyers, clergymen and friends of her son to convey her distress.
4. They behave differently. In contrast to the calm controlled environment of the press conference or staged media event, the people with non-Anglo heritage who we see on the streets are angry, violent or upset, their emotions on full display. They are often inarticulate or not able to speak English at all. They are filmed amidst the normal disarray of their homes where the differences in dress, habits and décor are on display for all to see. We see them in mosques which are quite different from the more familiar environment of Christian worship centres. They engage in religious rituals which, deprived of context and any clear explanation, can simply appear as strange and alien to the mainstream audience.

While many of these features may be unavoidable when dealing with people from different backgrounds, the news treatment can often make an unfortunate situation worse.
The series of stories on the counter-terror raids on 8 November show the forces of authority pitted against not just the suspects but their families and members of their communities. The cameras dwell on the violent scenes outside the Melbourne courtroom where friends of the accused attack a cameraman. The footage is sometimes allowed to run for several seconds, longer than the usual quick grab, reinforcing the identification of the Muslim community with threatening behaviour.

While many of the news services don’t go beyond this image Channel Nine does encourage a different sort of identification with the community by showing us the raid on one family home. In its coverage of 8 November we hear from the hijabbed sister of one of the suspects and are told of the impact the strain has had on other family members: one pregnant woman has started having contractions while another elderly woman is taken to hospital with chest pains. This introduces a human interest dimension to the story, personalising it in a way which encourages identification with, rather than alienation from, the featured talent.

The power of language

The language used by both talent and reporters adds another dimension to television news. The pictures enable us to watch and listen to the talent, and so form our own opinions about them and what they say. We are as alert to nuance and code as we are in any face-to-face encounter. Meanwhile the newsreaders and reporters use language to explain the stories to us and to ensure we get their point – and the assumed vantage point, because as Dunn notes the newsreader’s

mode of address, plus the relations of co-presence, encourage the audience's complicity. As a result the newsreader can be seen as speaking to us and for us, with the implication that ‘we’ are part of a consensus (and equally, not ‘they’, so there are inferred others). (2005:148)

Jacobs refers to this as the ‘performance’ of news whereby ‘The anchors serve to “overcode” the text, much in the same way as the music in a horror film signals the impending disaster.’ (1996:384) Thus nuance and code are equally at work here, so much so that while there is little that can be classified as full blown racism in the nightly bulletins the language used by both selected talent and news personnel often carries hidden meaning to those in the know – a phenomenon dubbed ‘dog whistle journalism’ (Poynting & Noble, 2003).

Multicultural implications

The politicians are masters of this kind of ‘dog whistle’ language. There is an implied sense of ‘other’ when on 8 November John Howard describes the anti-terror raids as

A splendid example of agencies at a commonwealth and state level working together for a common purpose and that is the protection of the people of Australia. When it comes to the safety of the Australian people and the security of this country there is no room for political manipulation.’(Nine Perth, Shepparton)

The pictures of uniformed police rounding up Muslim suspects reinforce the message that the community sits apart from the mainstream. The next day John Howard affirms: ‘Australians of Islamic faith, you are part of our community’(Ten, 9 November), however that same day his backbenchers raise the question of citizenship. Senator Bronwyn Bishop declares:

I think the question of citizenship and the sort of terrorist acts we are now dealing with is one we are going to have to grapple with. (SBS 9 November)

and the Prime Minster’s office on that same day states that ‘citizenship deprivation for those who don’t embrace Australian values’ is still under active consideration (ABC Perth). With government backbenchers like Bronwyn Bishop calling for the banning of headscarves at schools as ‘part of building a cohesive society’ (ABC Perth, Ten Sydney, 9 November) the message appears to be that acceptance in Australian society is fragile and conditional. This is confirmed when Treasurer Peter Costello states on 10 November

If you are somebody who wants to live in an Islamic state governed by Sharia law, you’re not going to be happy in Australia…Find somewhere else. There are Islamic states around the world, you know. (Ten, 10 November).

The clear delineation between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is evident in the following quote from Prime Minster John Howard, used in the Channel Nine bulletin on 12 November:

There is no singling out, there is no scapegoating. What [the police services] are doing is simply dealing with alleged breaches of Australian law…[Australians of all faiths have a responsibility] to reach out to our fellow Australians who are law-abiding Muslims and say to them you are our friends…[It is the obligation of moderate Muslims] to ensure as best they can with our cooperation that those within their midst who might seek to pervert the minds particularly of the young to a distorted obscene form of Islam are identified and dealt with.[author’s emphasis]

The breach is made explicit when Attorney General Phillip Ruddock says on the same day:

People in the Islamic community may think it more important to protect those who are part of their community than to offer assistance in relation to the assistance of the safety and security of the community generally. (ABC)

Another example of the hidden powers of language is the Sydney Channel Seven story on 9 November where a reporter goes onto the streets of Lakemba to get reactions from the local Muslim community to the terror raids and arrests. While the interviewees are of Middle Eastern background, they mostly speak in unaccented English and, with the exception of one woman in a hijab, are dressed in Western garb. However the background pictures of the Lakemba streets feature women in burkahs and men in robes, foregrounding images of otherness. The normality of the speakers is belied by the reporter’s comment that ‘while the streets out here seem subdued privately there is plenty of aggression’. The reporter says the news crew was threatened by the locals, though we see no evidence of this on the screen. We are then taken to ‘streets elsewhere in Sydney’ where ‘people feel a little differently’. An Anglo-Australian woman expresses her support for John Howard’s anti-terror laws, and a selection of predominantly Anglo-Australian commuters attest to their fears for their own safety. The reporter’s piece to camera injects a whole different dimension to the story that the pictures tell. We are encouraged to read into them a sense of threat and menace that we don’t witness for ourselves. Once we leave Lakemba for presumably the ‘normal’ Sydney streets the reporter’s language pits the broader public against the Lakemba residents.

A Perth story of the man accused of beating his wife to death shows how subtle differences in treatment can convey different messages. The story was run on the ABC, Seven and Ten on 15 November. All three stories feature pictures of the man chatting to court personnel outside the court and it is clear from his appearance that he is from the Indian subcontinent. The ABC report describes the man, James Joseph, as a ‘Willetton man’, ‘father of two’, and a ‘dedicated Christian,’ not mentioning where he comes from and downplaying the brutality of his crime. Ten refers to him as a ‘Perth father’ and an ‘Indian immigrant’. Seven also makes his provenance explicit, revealing that he ‘migrated from India with his wife five years ago.’ He is described as an ‘obsessively religious Willetton father’ and the reporter offers the most detail from the court transcript about what was described as his ‘pseudo-Christian beliefs’. The reporter states that Joseph had shown no remorse and still believed ‘that beatings were an appropriate way of dealing with his wife.’ The Seven version not only identifies Joseph as an immigrant (implying he is not really ‘one of us’) but attempts to distance him from proper ‘Christians’ by showing how his actions grew out of misguided and distorted beliefs. None of this is overt – we register it through the undercurrents in the language that is used.

Studio Packaging

Television news is a visual feast. The stories that are relayed are not just graphic representations in themselves, but are presented within a visual format that is intended to be just as eye-catching and arresting. The shorthand telegraphic nature of the news message is even more apparent in the labeling and badging applied to it in the studio presentation. All the surveyed news services feature one or two newsreaders seated at a desk against a background that often serves as an icon for their location (live pictures of Sydney behind the Sydney Seven newsreader; still photos of city buildings behind the Perth Nine newsreader). All services use graphics as a backdrop behind the newsreader either projected via chroma key or on a plasma screen. These provide a visual introduction to the upcoming story, capturing its essence in an image which can be either a graphic or a still taken from the story, or a graphic incorporating images from the story. The story title acts as a verbal headline, and often additional banners are used to further underscore the storyline. Graphics may not be used for every story - sometimes a banner will be used on its own.

The graphics constitute a library of visual images which are often used repeatedly as a kind of shorthand and become an iconic representation for particular events. The most obvious example is the national flag, which is used to remind us of the offshore location of a story (eg 7 November: Seven, Nine and the ABC feature a French flag amongst the flames of a street fire to depict a story on the Paris riots; 10 November: SBS and Nine use the Jordanian flag for a story on the Jordan hotel bombings). Symbols are also popular. Some examples:

• The radioactive symbol is used by Channel Nine for the story about Lucas Heights as a possible terrorist target, 14 November.
• Target rings are used in relation to possible terror attacks (8 November: Nine Perth on Howard’s anti-terror laws; 9 November: SBS on Howard calling for calm after terror arrests; 9 November: Seven Sydney on counter-terror court appearances)
• Scales of justice are used for court activity (10 November: SBS on delay of trial of Jack Thomas; 18 November: Seven Perth on Michelle Leslie’s release from a Bali gaol).

In addition to the pictures and banner headlines the colour scheme of the graphics is also of interest. The commercial services tend to favour reds and oranges, while the public broadcasters tend to opt for blues and greens. The vibrant colours tend to underscore the drama, while the cooler colours encourage a more muted response.

Multicultural implications

Because of the role these graphic enhancements play they tend to sum up stories in the most visually arresting way which also provides an emotional reinforcement to the story. They entrench associations which in the case of multicultural stories are in the most part negative. The dramatic counter-terrorism raids on 8 November provide a good illustration of the graphic at work. Here is what was featured on the Perth news services.

Seven Perth ‘Target Australia’

The graphic features an armed military figure in full battlegear including a face mask pointing a rifle outwards at the audience. The backdrop features the Australian flag and a gunsight. In the foreground is the headline in large letters. The predominant colours are blue and red.

Seven then splits up its two newsreader team to allow one to cross to the other to summarise the events of the day, a departure from the normal routine which underscores the importance of the story. The newsreader stands in front of a bright red background featuring the armed figure with gun and the gunsight from the lead image. The list of key events of the day are listed under the heading ‘The Facts’:

17 men arrested
Accused of plotting a holy war
Stockpiling chemicals
Alleged one man wanted to be a suicide bomber
Alleged leader Abdul Nacer Benbrika

The first story carries a banner once again using the ‘Target Australia title and graphic – giving us the reporter’s name and an additional story subtitle: ‘Terror attack averted’.

Nine Perth ‘Attack foiled’.

The graphic features a photo montage from the scene of the Sydney night raid. The top photo features members of the police search squad in white overalls assembled in the street. The bottom photo shows several police in black overalls entering one of the houses. The orange headline borders the top of the graphic, while there is a red streak down one side and an orange flame-like effect at the bottom of the frame.

The graphic introduces a series of stories about the raids. The newsreader through a voiceover enumerates the main events of the day, which are visually listed on the screen via another graphic which features the banner ‘Terror Raids’ and the photograph of a military sharpshooter aiming a weapon out into the audience against a backdrop of a gunsight and over the image of the Australian flag. The figure and the pose is very similar to the one used by Channel Seven. While the blue Channel nine news globe is the background, the list is a series of red banners cutting across the screen.

17 arrested
suspect shot
16 month investigation
‘Catastrophic attack’ averted

Ten Perth ‘Terror Raids’

The graphic has in the foreground the handcuffed bare wrists of a man. In the background is a huddle of blue uniformed police. The predominant colours are blue and and the flesh-coloured hands. The story begins with a simple blue banner with the Ten News logo and the reporter’s name.

ABC Perth ‘Police Raids’

The graphic has the chequered police emblem in the foreground and features a police car with uniformed police standing by based on pictures from the scene of the arrests. The predominant colours are blue and green though there is a smudge of red at th centre of the image.. The first story on the Sydney raids is introduced with no further fanfare.

SBS ‘Terror raids’

The graphic features a still image of a group of uniformed police against a backdrop of the Australian flag, the entire image against a muted red background which features a spotlight-type effect. Though the blue of the police uniforms and the flag is the dominant colour the reddish background and the spotlight add emotive emphasis. The newsreader gives us further details without the aid of further graphics and the first story is introduced with no further fanfare.

On this most dramatic of days the services display approaches that follow the news conventions, but with some telling differences. ABC, SBS and Channel Ten adopt a comparatively low-key approach. There is nothing different about their news format, their headlines are relatively factual, and they use the story banner to let us know the location and/or the reporter’s name. Channels Nine employs a minor format change to summarise the story so far, and while it uses colour for dramatic purposes it keeps its summary neutral apart from the reference to a ‘“catastrophic”’ attack – the quotation marks indicating these are words taken from the story. Channel Seven goes further than them all in exploiting the dramatic potential of the story. It uses a drastic format change to indicate the importance and unusual nature of the events, and uses red for dramatic effect. Its summary of events contains potentially scary references to ‘holy war’ and ‘suicide bomber’ and it uses the following story banner to reinforce the message.