BY MAHER MUGHRABI
If you were going to use the kind of language that seems to typify discussion of people from the Middle East, I suppose you might say that the Ethnic Community Council's seminar on "Responsible Media in a Multicultural Society" on November 21 was "hijacked".
It began with an academic, Kevin Dunn, giving us statistics on media portrayal of ethnic communities and ended with exasperated voices from the audience demanding explanations from representatives of the said media.
Renowned TV journalist George Negus advanced the defence of ignorance. Most journalists simply didn't know about the cultures with which they are dealing: they are "frighteningly ordinary" people representing as varied a spectrum as society itself.
If we are to believe this, where do senior editorial staff fit in? As Quang Luu, the head of SBS Radio, reminded us many journalists belong to organisations which have guidelines for this sort of thing.
For Peter Lynch, deputy editor of the Sun-Herald, talk of guidelines and Dunn's suggestion that ethnic minorities might be well served by a media monitor was worrying.
"The moment you create such a monitor, you move a step closer to telling me what to say and what not to say", he said. Lynch then imagined himself being told that there had been "too many negative stories" in last week's issue and that he now had to balance them with "so many positive ones". This, as Negus pointed out, ran counter to the spirit of news-gathering.
It is, however, not what a monitor would seek to do or what ethnic communities want.
Let us look at two stories both from the Sun-Herald's sister publication the Sydney Morning Herald.
On November 18, Ross Dunn (who also works for SBS) reported that, "In holy Bethlehem, Christmas will be cancelled this year". While the headline is not Dunn's, it captures the gist of a story in which Palestinians demonstrating against Israeli military occupation are perceived as some kind of collective Grinch.
Israeli military occupation, which violates international laws Australia has pledged to uphold, is not news? Who decided Israelis living on forcibly appropriated land could be called "Jewish residents"?
Josie Lacey, from the ECC's anti-racism subcommittee, told the seminar that while multiculturalism was most welcome,"We don't want people bringing their conflicts with them". This reminded me of the recent Foster's Lager ad, which included in its light-hearted manifesto of Australian-ness one heavy line: "I fight wars but never start wars — I would rather make peace."
What we have here is a variant of terra nullius, in which what is absent from the land is not people but international politics. One might imagine that Australia played no role in over two decades of misery for the people of East Timor, that Australia has no role in "policing" Iraq, that white Australians never had to take this land from anyone, that Australians have little to do with Israel.
On November 26, about 40 Australians demonstrated at Darling Harbour against a representative of Israel's military. Colonel Raanan Gissin was ostensibly here to raise money for irrigation in Israel — "Water for the Galilee: Give Israel A Drop Of Life". This was the same man who threatened to turn the Palestinian villages of Beit Jala and Beit Sahour into "another Beirut".
Such matters are linked by occupation: whatever resources go to Israel are ipso facto denied to Palestinians. In order to ensure a "drop of life" travels safely in only one direction, torrents of death and destruction must flow in the other. As Dr Seuss might have pointed out, the Grinch steals Christmas from a society that marginalised him to create its "peace".
The following day's story, provided to the SMH by an agency reporter, led with the image of people engaged in a "neutral" activity — attending a fundraiser — being "taunted".
Once more the tranquillity of power in operation was upset by stroppy people bringing their conflicts in. The S11 protests in Melbourne, which Premier Steve Bracks characterised as "un-Australian", were similarly portrayed.
Neither Lynch nor Negus were willing to explain how such a consensus has emerged. Negus was willing to plead "collective ignorance" and to accuse myself and others of "getting angry", which of course further disturbed "the peace".
The custodians of the establishment media know that while this is an island nation, in economic terms no nation is an island. It is time the illusion was broken in the political sphere as well.