Stories unheard stay untold
Unpacking the lack of diversity in Australian newsrooms with Lenore Taylor, editor of The Guardian. Interview by Andrew Murdoch.
Guardian Australia editor Lenore Taylor says Australian newsrooms lack diversity and need a broader range of journalists to better reflect the views and concerns of the public.
Taylor, who spent three decades reporting on federal politics, was a panellist for the Walkley Foundation’s Shining a Light on the Truth event in Perth on Saturday, November 2.
She said while a “Canberra bubble” did exist in political reporting, the lack of diversity was an industry-wide issue.
“We have to look further and broader for applicants for our jobs. At the moment we are getting excellent applicants, but they are not sufficiently diverse,” she said.
“By and large, though there are exceptions, we get the same kind of people coming into newsrooms.
“I think the answer, not just in Canberra but more generally, is to have a much broader diversity of journalists.
“Not just cultural and ethnic [diversity] but socioeconomic. A broader range of people telling stories will mean we tell stories relevant to a broader range of readers.”
In London in 2017, 71 people died in the Grenfell Tower blaze, the deadliest residential building fire in London since World War II.
Taylor said problems in the tower block were widely spoken about amongst the community of residents but did not attract media attention; the tragedy highlighted the gaps in reporting from newsrooms lacking diversity.
“That tower block was right near where a lot of journalists live, but they lived in Kensington not in the tower block,” she said.
“The problems in that tower block had been known for a really long time and discussed in the community that lived in the tower block. But no journalists had any in with that community, no journalists were part of that community or knew about that community so nobody had written the story.
“I think diversity more generally is a question we should be asking, rather than [focusing on] a Canberra bubble.”
The Shining A Light Newsroom was supported by Edith Cowan University. See the full Shining A Light Newsroom coverage here.
