The Racial Hatred Act: Case study 5

Introduction:

• 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.

The Sydney Morning Herald's Paul Sheehan
comments:

The key is a single word - ghetto. This story appeared exclusively on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald after the study was given to me by the editors of the journal People and Place. They sent it to me because they believed the study revealed an alarming trend and they wanted maximum exposure in a serious newspaper. They knew I was a senior writer whose work was often given prominence on the Herald. Because of this trust, and because the careful language of academic reports is so easily over-simplified for news reports, I sent a copy of the story back to People and Place before publication. It was carefully checked. The editors of People and Place were nervous about the word 'ghetto' but I explained to them that I would use the word for several reasons: 1. Coupled with the information I had from sources within the Department of Social Security and from the police, it was clear that a culture of high crime and high welfare abuse was forming among the increasingly concentrated Vietnamese populations of Sydney and Melbourne. Sydney's Cabramatta had not only become the centre of the heroin retail trade in Australia, but it was also a centre of crime, of gang activity, of welfare abuse, and of sweat shop labour. 2. I regarded 'enclave' as a safe academic term used to protect the author from accusations of scholarly sensationalism. Journalists don't have this problem. 3. The story did not merely rely on the People and Place study. 4. The figures showed a serious trend which was growing and had to be recognised. If an area functions like a ghetto than call it a ghetto. Obviously the word has high news impact. Nevertheless, I did self-censor this story. I made no mention of crime, or drugs, or gangs, because they are such loaded emotional terms and the immigration debate was already heated enough. I was also troubled by the use of anonymous quotes in the story. I don't like them and all journalists avoid them if possible. But I had interviewed three welfare officers within the Department of Social Security who were distressed at the systematic fraud going on, and the worst abusers were Asians. Two of my sources were Asian. For their personal and professional protection, they asked not to be named. But they are happy to assist the government in any subsequent inquiry.

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