Where the AHRC Gets its Media Advice

The extent to which cultural-left activists go to impose their myopic ideology on mainstream Australians beggars belief.  We now life in a world where common sense is increasingly uncommon and reason and rationality no longer prevail

The latest example of this group-think is the ‘Race and Reporting Handbook produced by Media Diversity Australia and the Australian Human Rights Commission.  Obviously, the authors have never read George Orwell’s essay Politics and the English Language.

Instead of journalists reporting the facts based on objectivity and reason the report implies Australian society is inherently racist, that Aborigines are the victim of inter-generational trauma caused by colonial violence and it’s wrong to refer to race because the concept “serves to maintain white supremacy”. That the authors, by referring to white supremacy, commit the very sin they argue should be avoided goes unnoticed.  Also unnoticed is the way the report suggests Anglo-Australians are always at fault.

As expected, the report begins with a Welcome to Country with the usual trigger warnings stating indigenous readers and other “negatively racialised people and people with lived experience of racism should exercise caution”.

Woke concepts like intersectionality, where journalists are told any reporting must acknowledge “intersecting aspects of identity – such as race, gender, age, sexuality and disability” and conscious and unconscious bias are also present. The report stresses the need to emphasise diversity and inclusion when it suggests editorial teams, instead of being chosen on merit and ability should reflect “the diversity in the audience we seek to serve”. Ignored is choosing journalists based on their race, gender and sexuality instead of who is best able to do the job. Beyond being offensively  tokenistic, such policies create unsettling workplace environments.

The key terms listed in the report provide further evidence of how one-sided it is.  Under the heading Indigenous Sovereignty, the statement is made Indigenous Australians reject the Western concept of sovereignty and according to their definition, it will always be Aboriginal land.

Settler Colonialism is described as “the ‘elimination of the native’ through various means, from genocide to assimilation” and racism attributable to unequal power relationships. The implication is that societies such as Australia are structurally racist.

The Race and Reporting Handbook is simply the most recent in a long line of politically correct diversity guides and strategies ostensibly promoting the cult of  equity, diversity and inclusiveness so distressingly common in our universities, museums, corporations and the public service. Government diversity guides warn against using binary, heteronormative terms like husband/wife, man/woman and pronouns like him/her.  Midwives are told not to use terms like breast milk and breast feeding.

Universities now offer safe spaces, except if you are a Jewish student, and trigger warnings to ensure woke students are not offended by literary texts or when studying historical events dealing with violence and conflict. Even worse, the ANU’s Australian Dictionary of Biography seeks to rewrite history when it warns readers

In addition, some articles contain terms or views that were acceptable within mainstream Australian culture in the period in which they were written, but may no longer be considered appropriate.

As a result of viewing the past through the current, politically correct prism, the ANU, much like Orwell’s Ministry of Truth in 1984, states

Older articles are being reviewed with a view to bringing them into line with contemporary values, but the original text will remain available for historical context.

Monash University proudly displays its woke credentials when touting how its Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity strategy is committed to “advancing inclusion within the Monash community, and Monash’s role as a global leader by advocating for change in broader society”. Gone are the days when universities were dedicated to the best that’s been thought and said; once they measured success in terms of promoting truth, beauty and wisdom.  Under the deadening influence of championing EDI, success is now measured in terms being woke.

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that “the limits of my language means the limits of my world”.  History proves that when language is controlled and manipulated by either the left or the right to enforce group-think, freedom of thought and freedom of expression are lost.

When society is condemned as structurally racist, then the default position is that mainstream Australians are invariably guilty of prejudice and bias and Indigenous Australians and migrants are stereotyped as disadvantaged and oppressed. What is really and systematically being oppressed is language and truth

Dr Kevin Donnelly is a senior fellow at the ACU’s PM Glynn Institute and author of Wake Up To Woke.