Media Representations & Indigenous Voices Local media in Yorta Yorta country has often been criticised for misrepresenting and ignoring Indigenous voices, and for perpetuating the dominance of white perspectives – see extent of media control in region. The McPherson media was challenged by Yorta Yorta scholar, Peter Ferguson who argued that in accordance with Australia Press Council standards, McPherson media was not fulfilling its role in providing ‘accurate fair and balanced reporting’ of Indigenous issues. Moreover, it was giving disproportionately higher representation to non-Indigenous voices on Indigenous matters in the region. These views are supported by Derryn Shoenborn's (2003:42) study of the McPherson media during the Yorta Yorta native title claim (1994-2002), which found that ‘the local media outlets were consciously, as well as unconsciously, used as a political tool for fighting change and for fighting the claim’. Shoenbourn's thesis was also critical of the way that the journalists reported on the Yorta Yorta Mediation process, 1994-5, a judicial process in which confidential information was reported in the media by Geoff Grey a journalist of the Shepparton News (Yorta Yorta Mediation, Shepparton, 1995). This paper evaluates the McPherson media and the way it represents Indigenous issues, by examining; how McPherson media represented the campaign for National Parks and the Yorta Yorta Cooperative management plan in the Shepparton News, Riverine Herald and the Country News during the period of 2007-2010. It uses the framework of content analysis to examine materials over this period and to assess whether or not the McPherson media have continued to exclude the history and knowledge of the Yorta Yorta by privileging white colonial voices and giving them disproportionate representation on Indigenous matters in the region. The paper then examines the journalistic style employed by particular writers who consistently use the media to create negative images of the Indigenous community and to promote fear and discord within the region. The Yorta Yorta campaign for the achievement of National Parks and Joint management agreements for the Barmah-Millewa Forest Wetlands, has been a long and gruelling struggle steeped in a tradition of polico-legal actions that began before the turn of the 19th Century. For the purpose of this study however, it will focus on the main articles written during the period of the decisions to create National Parks for the Barmah-Millewa Forest wetlands. These range from when the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council (VEAC) released the final report in July 2008 recommending the creation of the Barmah National Park; the 30th of December 2008 when John Brumby announced that Barmah National Park would be established; 4th December 2009 when Premier Nathan Rees announces Millewa was to become a national park and; 2nd March 2010 when the Government announced that some of Millewa Forest would not be protected until 2015. During this period some 66 articles on the National Parks were published in the Shepparton News, Riverine Herald and Country News, the triad of newspapers that have the power to influence and to shape the perceptions of non- Indigenous communities about Indigenous issues within the heartland of the study region. While the paper does not include stories about Indigenous people that were unrelated to the National Parks it explores in detail the degree of representation and space given to Yorta Yorta voices and their long and continued cultural connections with the study area during the creation of the Barmah and Millewa National Parks. Contextual Analysis The Yorta Yorta’s commitment to protecting their land and heritage cannot be understood without some knowledge of their ancestral connections with the study area which pre-date settler colonial history by at least 60000 years BP (before present) (Atkinson, 2000:14-35). Yet very few of the 66 articles surveyed contained any contextual information about the important and continued struggle of the Yorta Yorta to reclaim their lands, and not one article recognised that the Yorta Yorta have been connected to this land since time immemorial. Only one of the 66 articles on the creation of National Parks mentioned the Native Title Claim (1994-2002) while one other referred to a fight that had lasted for ‘generations’. This is consistent with Michael Meadow’s criticism (2001: 56) that the ‘omission of important contextual material has become a common occurrence in Australian newspaper coverage of Indigenous affairs’. The McPherson media however had no qualms about repeatedly referring to the heritage of the white settlers, which was mentioned in 14% of articles. One article titled ‘Heritage lost for loggers’ quoted harvester Kevin Swan who claimed his family had been connected to the forest for 6 generations over 150 years (Wood, 2008: 6). Another article quoted John Williams who said “the people who have logged the forest for over 4 generations… are proud of how they have managed their much-loved forests" (Riverine Herald, 2009b: 8). These articles serve to emphasise the connection of the settlers to land and forests regarded as ‘theirs’ and in doing so they attempt to normalise the enormous timeline of the prior occupation and care of the land by the traditional owners. This privileging of one history is not confined to McPherson media, but reflects a wider government trend to allocate resources to preserving and publicising the more recent colonial histories over and above Indigenous heritage (Atkinson, 2010: 32). Highlighting the loggers’ and graziers’ connections to the forest supported their arguments against the National Parks and ignored the justification for protecting land that has belonged to the Yorta Yorta for thousands of generations. The articles on the National Parks contained few references to land rights or the value of local Indigenous knowledge in preserving the forests. In total only 14% of the articles referred to Indigenous connections to land but none of these articles used the phrase ‘land rights’, or 'land justice' instead sticking to safer phrases such as the traditional owners or traditional custodians (Riverine Herald, 2010a: 2; Riverine Herald, 2009a: 3). The side lining of the rights debate has also been documented in other disputes over land claims which quickly moved to discussions of bureaucracy (Hartley & McKee, 2000: 289). This reluctance to refer to fundamental rights also devalued the reciprocal obligations that the Yorta Yorta feel towards the protection of the forest wetlands and their unique local knowledge of how to manage the forest for the future in a more holistic way. Only 6% of the articles made even a vague reference to Indigenous knowledge by using brief phrases such as ‘holistic protection’ and ‘good environmental outcomes’ (Riverine Herald, 2010b: 3; Riverine Herald, 2008b: 5). The benefits of joint management were never expanded on in the newspaper articles, even though Yorta Yorta voices articulated in very pragmatic way, the need for a shared management approach that would include Indigenous knowledge and land care practises. For example, authorities now recognise that using traditional fire methods are an effective tool in land management but this fact was unrecognised in all the articles surveyed, with many articles suggesting that the creation of National Parks would cause uncontrollable bush fires (Wood, 2009: 6). In summary, although there were some references to the Yorta Yorta being the traditional owners of the land, articles on the National Parks never mentioned land rights and very few recognised that local Indigenous knowledge would be valuable in preserving the National Parks. Newspapers often privilege non-Indigenous sources and this tendency was clear in the articles on the creation of National Parks. Many minorities in the community struggle to obtain media coverage because the structures behind the collection of news work against them and their opinions are less likely to be seen as credible or newsworthy (Van Dijk, 2007: 37). This may explain Hartley’s observation (1992: 209) that Aboriginals are often not asked for their own opinion on a news story. Schoenborn (2003:37) found Indigenous voices were prioritised in only 20% of articles of the Yorta Yorta native title claim and Meadows (2001: 56) discovered a similar 4:1 ratio in favour of non-Indigenous voices when studying the general media coverage of the 10 point plan for amending native title. Of the 66 articles on the creation of National Parks, only seven, or approximately 11%, included any quote from an Indigenous source. This incredibly low figure suggests that Yorta Yorta voices were even more excluded from discussions over National Parks than they were over the Native Title Claim, perhaps because the creation of a co-managed national park was not sees as predominantly an Indigenous issue, unlike the Native Title Claim. The most outstanding finding that requires further scrutiny is that of the 14 articles in the Country News, in which there was not a single quote from anyone identified as a Yorta Yorta or Indigenous person. It is extraordinary that any paper, no matter who the intended audience, could completely exclude any Indigenous perspectives on the creation of the National Parks. From this it is evident that Yorta Yorta voices were under-represented in McPherson media articles on National Parks and this is consistent with under-representation found in earlier research. One also needs to closer examine the journalistic style and motives of the main reporter on the Yorta Yorta Native Title and National Park Campaign whose approach on these issues was called into question during the Yorta Yorta Mediation Process. Geoff Adams has since assumed the editorial control of the Country News which is one of the key McPherson Media outlets in what is regarded as the more anti Indigenous rights region of Numurkah and Nathalia. Further analysis of this matter will be returned to shortly. Instead of quoting Yorta Yorta sources, McPherson media newspapers relied on non-Indigenous voices to provide opinions on the creation of the new National Parks. Politicians and other powerful ‘elites’ often receive more coverage because they control ‘source discourses’ such as press conferences and press releases (Van Dijk, 2007:37). The prominence of politicians on issues relevant to Indigenous people was noted by Hartley and McKee (2000: 28) and documented by Meadows (2001: 58) who found politicians or other conservative forces including farming and mining dominated media coverage. The graph below shows that this trend continued in McPherson media as politicians were the most commonly quoted source in articles on National Parks, closely followed by conservative forces including the timber industry, graziers and farmers. While pro park voices on like that of Friends of the Earth and Victorian National Parks Association were well represented in the Riverine Herald and Shepparton News they were least covered by the Country News, who instead prioritised representatives of conservative logging grazing and farming interests as well as the conservative Rivers and Red Gum Alliance who oppose the National Parks in their current form. This data demonstrates that Yorta Yorta voices were marginalised in favour of politicians, conservative forces, pro-environmental groups and the Alliance in the coverage of National Parks, and this bias was most blatant in articles from the Country News edited by Geoff Gray. Apart from considering the context and the sources, the articles were also categorised according to whether they were overtly positive, negative, or unclear on the creation of the local National Parks. This approach was taken to follow up on Schoeborn’s discovery (2003: 35) that only one of the articles he studied in McPherson media on the native title claim could be categorised as positive, while most were ‘overwhelmingly negative towards Indigenous people’. For this study on National Parks, articles were defined as negative if they only included sources opposed to the park, and vice versa. To avoid the judgements becoming too subjective, any article that contained both and pro and anti-park voices was categorised as unclear, regardless of whether one perspective dominated the article. The results above confirm Schoenborn’s finding that there are more negative than positive articles in McPherson media in relation to native title claims or the National Parks and highlights the continued exclusion and bias against Indigenous rights based issues by the Country News, a new key player that has arisen since the Yorta Yorta Native Title Claim and one that continues to play a key role in the shaping of mostly negative perceptions of Indigenous rights based issues in the region. The proportion of positive articles however, was far higher in articles on the creation of National Parks than on the native title claim. Although this can partly be explained by the large number of articles in the unclear column, the most plausible reason for why one third of all articles were positive about the National Parks is the influence of those more powerful groups that were in favour of the parks. Non-Indigenous pro-park sources including State Politicians, environmental groups and the National Park Associations were well covered in the media and this explains why articles on the creation of National Parks were more positive than those on native title. Despite this change of a broader collective of groups in support of Yorta Yorta aspirations and the creation of National Parks, McPherson media still ran more negative than positive articles on the creation of the National Parks similar to that of the Native Title Claim a decade before. Although many of the articles were clearly positive or negative about the National Parks, some of the ‘unclear’ articles were constructed to privilege or discredit one view over another and again the tendency to privilege one perspective over others was clearest in the Country News. In December 2009 the Country News devoted the first 15 paragraphs of an article to Krinstina Keneally reassessing the decision to protect Millewa, the River Red Gum Alliance, and the Forest Products Associations, while the last 3 paragraphs buried on the second page included brief quotes from the Wilderness Society and the National Parks Associations (Oliver, 2009:1). An earlier article quoted a cattleman, a timber harvester and the alliance before including a few brief paragraphs from a National Parks Association (Adams, 2009: 3). These articles included sources from both sides so they were put in the ‘unclear’ category; however a closer look at the order of voices and the space given to each perspective indicates that the anti-park views were given priority over pro-park voices. In addition to marginalising pro-park perspectives, some articles also sought to discredit Yorta Yorta. This is consistent with Hartley and McKee’s (2000: 292) suggestion that the media often focus on disagreement and dissent within Indigenous communities. This focus was apparent in an article from the Riverine Herald summarising the Alliance report, which stated that “many Indigenous people believed VEACs attempt to redress social disadvantage by granting public land management control to traditional owners would ultimately be counter productive and should be scrapped" (Chudley, 2008: 2). This attacks the credibility of pro-park Yorta Yorta spokespeople who were denied the chance to respond to these claims within the article. These brief examples show that various techniques were employed by particular journalists to discredit and marginalise Yorta Yorta and pro-park voices and therefore the proportion of negative articles on the creation of National Parks in McPherson media is higher than the quantitative analysis suggested. Many of the articles in McPherson media failed to recognise that the Yorta Yorta is part of the community. In his analysis of articles on the native title claim, Schoenborn (2003: 38) observed that ‘one would assume it was almost solely an issue for the non-Indigenous residents of the area’. This focus on non-Indigenous views was most blatant in an article in the Country News which included under a banner ‘what they said’ the perspectives of the Victorian Farmers Federation, the timber industry, the shire councillor and the cattleman. This article implies that these four anti-park perspectives are the only relevant community responses and this serves to further devalue the voices of Indigenous members of the community. Van Dijk (2000:37) argues that the media creates a distinction between ‘Us’, otherwise known as the white community, and ethnic ‘others’. This distinction was clearly made by some of the non-Indigenous sources quoted in McPherson media, who claimed to speak for a local community that implicitly excluded its Indigenous members. This is demonstrated in examples such as this remark from the Barmah Preservation League ‘the local people haven't been considered at all as far as Barmah is concerned' (Shepparton News, 2008: 5) as well as this accusation from a timber industry spokesperson 'Mr Brumby has turned his back on country communities, ignoring the advice of local people' (Riverine Herald, 2008a: 5). These and other similar statements refer to a local people or country community which implicitly does not include local Yorta Yorta people, whose advice to create the parks had perhaps been considered. Meadows (2004:284) has observed that the local media ‘show little or no initiative in attempting to discover and report what issues really concern Aboriginal Australia’. This observation, in combination with the exclusion of Yorta Yorta from definitions of the community, may explain why the important fact that the parks would be co-managed by traditional owners was included in just under a third (30%) of all the reports on the National Parks. In conclusion, and in support of Peter Ferguson's claims of disproportionate media representations of Indigenous voices at the outset, it is evident that the Yorta Yorta’s support for co-managed parks was largely unrecognised by McPherson media, which privileged voices claiming to represent an implicitly non-Indigenous community. The creation of the co-managed Barmah and Millewa National Parks was an important step in the Yorta Yorta’s struggle for land justice, yet the Yorta Yorta’s knowledge of and relationship to the land was ignored by McPherson media. Instead, articles on the National Parks marginalised Yorta Yorta voices and privileged non-Indigenous sources including politicians, and conservative forces. Although there were more positive articles in McPherson media on the creation of National Parks than the native title claim, the majority of articles were overtly negative or minimised and discredited pro-park voices and particularly those of the Country News which seems to carry a negative bias towards the Yorta Yorta from the Native Title Case and Mediation process (1994-95). In the final analysis the study clearly points to the fact that the McPherson media excluded the Yorta Yorta from their construction of the community and this may explain, but not justify, why the articles on the creation of National Parks failed and continues not to provide adequate, positive and fair coverage of the Yorta Yorta as a uniquely based cultural and regional community with valid claims for what are no more than their inherent rights. References Adams, G. ‘Parks mark end of an era’, Country News, 5 Jan. 2009, p. 3. Atkinson, W., ‘Cultural Tourism & the Yorta Yorta Experience: A case of Inclusion or Exclusion’?’ in W. Atkinson and Friends of the Earth, Research Papers: National Parks, Joint Management and Cultural Tourism, 2010. Atkinson, W., Holistic View of Land and Heritage, Working Paper Prepared for On Country Learning: Indigenous Studies: 166-230, 2003. Atkinson, W. 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