Conversations in the media around the Racial Discrimination Act and ABC reporting have both highlighted the need to examine rights and obligations in regard to accessing and publishing information, writes Pia White.
I think about the life this man was fleeing. I imagine what he was fleeing from. I think about the hiding, the terror, the fear, the desperation that drove him from his home. I think about the journey he would have taken to Indonesia.
Spencer Zifcak explains why Australia’s asylum seeker policy misses the scale of the global refugee tragedy, disregarding both the humanity of asylum seekers and Australia’s international responsibility.
Sarah George, co-ordinator of the national education program “Five Facts You Didn’t Know About ‘Boat People’”, tackles social media, online protesting and planning a popular campaign.
Laura O’Neill describes the situation on the ground for asylum seekers in Indonesia now that Australia is “deterring” boat arrivals – work rights, UNHCR processing, access to education and the threat of deportation or detention once refugee claims are rejected.
In the wake of recent revelations that Australia has turned at least two boats of asylum seekers back to Indonesia, Clarrie Burke looks at both the history and the current unfolding of the Coalition promise to “stop the boats”.
Melissa Reid looks at media coverage of Kony and asylum seekers to ask, does our fast-paced media culture need to change?
Pia White looks into the media’s role in cultural shift, through the recent coverage of two pertinent human rights issues: asylum seekers and gender equality.
“What’s your name?”
He told them.
“Where does that name come from?”
“From? My mother.”
When it comes to significant shifts in culture, law and society are poised in an agonising “chicken or egg” scenario. Does the law change from above, trickling down to alter a culture? Or does a movement rise up, demand, fight, lobby for a change to which the law eventually concedes? It’s a dynamic relationship that doesn’t obey a strict rule of cause and effect.