- interpretation of complex research findings, surveys, and polls in news stories
Reports:
- 'Federal laws blamed for Sydney's welfare ghettos', Paul Sheehan, The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 July 96
- 'Ethnic ghettos claim 'irresponsible', Illawarra Mercury, 2 July 96
- 'Urban Ghettos', Melbourne Yarra Leader, 8 July 96
Comment:
- The following journalists/editors comment on their coverage of Ernest Healy's report.
- The Sydney Morning Herald's Paul Sheehan
- AAP's Margaret McDonald
- The Illawarra Mercury's Peter Cullen
- The Melbourne Yarra Leader's Bob Osburn
- Ernest Healy, researcher and author of 'Welfare benefits and residential concentrations amongst recently arrived migrant communities' on how his report was misinterpreted by the media.
- The Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia comments on the harm done to communities through the use of loaded language and offensive terminology in the media.
Please note that none of the reports in the case studies have been the subject of complaints or queries under the Racial Hatred Act.
Partly due to their necessarily reductionist nature, news stories created from reports on complex research findings, surveys and polls may be inaccurate and misleading. In many cases this may be the inadvertent result of carelessness or deadline pressures. In reporting complex research there are clearly instances where, through the inevitable process of selection, journalists bring their own values to bear on how the findings are interpreted and presented.
A report by Ernest Healy, 'Welfare Benefits and Residential Concentrations Amongst Recently-Arrived Migrant Communities', published in People and Place, the journal of the Australian Forum for Population Studies at Monash University examines the relationship between the long-term dole dependence of recently-arrived migrants and residential concentrations of disadvantaged migrant groups.
The report reveals that a high proportion of recently-arrived migrants from some birthplace groups remain dependent on unemployment benefits for an unusually long period of time after their arrival in Australia and that residential concentrations of migrants tended to increase rather than decrease over time, exacerbating an entrenched environment of social and economic disadvantage.
Healy concludes that the contradiction between idealistic ideology (of government) and empirical research is sufficiently great to require a basic reconsideration of immigration and settlement policies.
Regardless of whether or not Healy's analysis is considered sound, the news stories taken from metropolitan, regional and suburban press illustrate how reports such as his can become more sensational in the hands of the news media.
The news stories argue that the report's call for a reconsideration of immigration policy is an argument against immigration. Healy, however, says the purpose of his research was to inform public policy and address concerns about disadvantaged groups who are exploited by an informal labour market.
Healy also says that the use of the word 'ghetto' was deliberately sensational, particularly as he had used it when describing the US situation and not when referring to the areas of study in Sydney and Melbourne. He refers to these areas as 'enclaves'.
