Attending the annual Media Diversity Australia (MDA) forum today provided me with some terrific conversations about journalism, focusing on things like the “activist” label often applied to diverse journalists and the immense challenges of truly maintaining “impartiality.”
These discussions immediately sent me back to my university days, to core debates in journalism around notions of objectivity and subjectivity. In the days of learning the principles of the craft—the who, what, why, when, where and how—we were taught a seemingly simple, yet ultimately false, idea: that objectivity meant just presenting the facts, while subjectivity was dismissed as merely personal opinion. I knew even back then that for every fact, there were other ways of seeing it. Sure, black might be black and white might be white, but it’s in all that grey where we find the real nuance, and where the most important stories and truth often lie.
I can’t remember who said it, but someone summed it up perfectly. To be reporting that person x says it’s sunny and person y says it’s raining is not journalism: journalism is taking a look out the bloody window and reporting the truth.
The forum today brilliantly crystallised this vital concept. Genuine objectivity isn’t achieved by suppressing bias or blindly reciting “facts”; it’s the rigorous process of interrogating and balancing multiple biases, including your own as a journalist, and critically examining systemic biases like who controls commissioned stories in a newsroom.
This was the central heart of the conversation between Antoinette Latouf, an Australian journalist, author, and MDA co-founder, and Jan Fran, an Australian journalist and satirist. They discussed a core paradox: diversity is seemingly only valued “so long as it doesn’t challenge.” Amusingly, Jan Fran described herself as “the other one”, a reference to their shared Lebanese heritage, and which I thought meant she often went “under the radar” to the more well known and outspoken Antoinette!!
This perspective was emphasized by Nour Haydar, an Australian journalist, formerly at the ABC, now at The Guardian who spoke about an apparent double standard. While her personal experience of having lost her mother to domestic violence was seen as an asset to her work, she said her being Arab was simultaneously framed as a liability that precluded her from reporting “objectively” on certain issues.
It all boiled down to that one, unforgettable quote from the research presented at the forum: “The white colleagues simply do not interrogate their own internal biases, but constantly expect us to.” It’s a gut-punch of a line that reveals that value judgment and subjectivity aren’t flaws; they’re inherent in every journalistic step.
Despite the internal resistance within some newsrooms, the empirical evidence demonstrates the indisputable value of diversity in the media.
I was reminded today of Susan Marjetti’s incredible story at CBC Radio 99.1 in Toronto. Susan, a Canadian media executive, realised the station’s homogeneous line-up was becoming irrelevant, so she intentionally diversified the on-air talent. That injection of multiple subjective perspectives led to measurable success: the program became the number one radio show in Toronto multiple times. It proved that broadening the lens directly improves both the objective outcome and market relevance.
The argument for diversity is just as strong when looking at disability portrayal in media. I remember discussing this at a conference last year. People with disabilities make up a massive 20% of the population, yet appear in less than 1% of advertisements. This disparity, as noted by a panellist at a conference I attended, often comes from a simple, crippling fear of failure—a fear of “getting it wrong and being cancelled.” But groups like the Unstereotype Alliance have the data: authentic ads that reflect diverse subjective realities are simply more effective and lead to increased sales.
Rhianna Patrick, a former colleague, an Australian journalist and broadcaster who now works with the National Indigenous Radio Service (NIRS) highlighted the media’s failure to capture the nuance of the Indigenous ‘No’ vote during the Voice Referendum. This ‘No’ vote was driven by a range of different subjective reasons beyond the simple binary that dominated coverage.
Rhianna emphasised that continuous education is key. You don’t stop learning when you graduate from a journalism degree; you have to constantly update your theories and avoid clinging to outdated ideas about truth and fairness.
I couldn’t stay for the entire day, but I am so glad I was afforded the time to go, listen, and think deeply about the career I’ve pursued for several decades.
And on a personal level, it was wonderful to catch up with two former colleagues, Rhianna, and Paula Kruger who is the CEO of MDA.
