Why the media are to blame for racialising Melbourne’s ‘African gang’ problem
Media organisations need to look hard at their coverage of Australian race issues and the power of the words they use when covering those stories, writes the University of Adelaide’s John Budarick in this cross post from The Conversation.
Just before Channel 7 aired a Sunday Night special devoted to Melbourne’s “African gangs” problem earlier this month, the race discrimination commissioner, Tim Soutphommasane, went on Twitter to criticise a promotion spot as “fear-mongering and racial hysteria”.
The same could be said of a string of stories in the Australian media in recent months on violent incidents committed by “African gangs” or people of “African appearance”. The death of a 19-year-old Sudanese woman at a party in Melbourne earlier this month was linked in some reports with gang violence – something Victorian police ruled out. Even a gate-crashing incident at a teenager’s birthday party this week was deemed a news story of national importance by The Australian due to the culprits’ racial identity.
lives in adelaide…sayas it all. The media are not at fault here, the community has done this to themselves in their failure to reign in their Australian born children and you can blame the Andrews government for pretending ithere is no issue and a victorian police force made so PC it is frightened to act. It is the shocking level of violence of car jackings, home invasions, and gang predation which occurrs every week in Melbourne. Look up the riot in Frankston with scores of machette weilding Australian-sudanese youths running amok, or Moomba, or St Kilda beach…
You heard it here first. It’s ‘the media’ giving life support to that ‘most pernicious’ link between race and behaviour. Not, you know… reality.
Race is a strong predictor of culture and culture is a strong predictor of behaviour. Remember that Australia is ‘multi-cultural’. Being born here doesn’t mean you weren’t raised into a minority culture.
Virtue-signalling, ivory-tower academics have lost all credibility on these subjects. Most of the failing legacy media has too but some, in their death throes, are bound to remember how to serve their audience rather than lecture them from on high.
If statistics indicate that Australians of African descent are over represented in crime statistics why should the Media hide such evidence and worse still why should the Police and government deny the reality. People in other states are not threatened to the extent Melbourneians are so what is the point of trying to hide the reality. This writer lives in a fantasy world if he thinks that the media is unfair in reporting on what would be exposed in social media eventually as people report their problems.
The statistics also show that men are over-represented in crime statistics, especially domestic violence.
So your recommendation would be what?
I wonder why there isn’t African crime gang reporting on the ABC? Must be because they are lefty socialists.
Everyone commenting here so far has missed the point entirely.
Danielle, would you like to elaborate?
In face much of the media actually downplay the incidents involving black Africans or Muslims not to fan the flames of already well-founded community concerns.
What if these “well-founded flames of concerns” you speak of are not at all well-founded but actually based on the media’s perpetration. Hence the need for downplaying races or religion’s input. How would you feel if you copped the blame for all the atrocities males have done over the years? I, as a male, would hate to lay blame for all the horrible things our gender has done.
The point is that communities composed predominately of recently arrived migrants face issues of cultural isolation and economic hardship, the same issues that now-accepted migrant groups faced in their day.
These socioeconomic issues are a recipe for creating gangs, which create a sense of empowerment for their members, which nothing else in their lives offers. It’s pretty simple – treat people badly and they will behave badly. If you want to avoid gangs, migrants need to be welcomed and supported, not scapegoated.
The filthy scumbag politicians who are prepared to get into the gutter, and the commercial media hacks spouting their worthless drivel need to fuck right off and take a long hard look at themselves. It’s an absolute disgrace, and the number of knuckle-dragging mouthbreathers out there who lap this shit up is thoroughly appalling.