The Dynamics of News and Indigenous Policy in Australia

Book excerpt: "Despite intense concern among academics and advocates, there remains an absence of scholarship on the way media reporting exacerbates, rather than resolves, policy problems. To fill part of this gap, this book offers rich insights into the news media's role in the development of policy in Australia, and explores the complex and interactive relationship between news media and Australian Indigenous affairs. Kerry McCallum and Lisa Waller critically examine how Indigenous health, bilingual education, and controversial legislation were portrayed through public media, and they look closely at how Indigenous people were both being excluded from policy and media discussion, as well as using the media to their advantage. To that end, the book poses important questions about the power of news media to shape the national conversation, and the complex and dynamic relationships between news media and politics."--Page [4] of cover.