Australia’s mainstream media has long viewed refugees, migrants and Indigenous communities through a “deficit lens”. That’s where these populations – in all their glorious complexity – are framed simply as a “problem” that needs to be “fixed”. Never achieving enough. Never grateful enough. Just never quite deserving enough to be seen as legitimate Australians.
This deficit discourse is created, in part, by a mainstream media and screen culture that is overwhelmingly white and doesn’t reflect the cultural diversity of its population. Media Diversity Australia reports that 75% of presenters, commentators and reporters have an Anglo-Celtic background, while only 6% have an Indigenous or non-European background. This is despite Census data indicating nearly half of all Australians had at least one parent born overseas.
