‘Diversity’ with an ABC twist

Friend of Quadrant and contributor Christopher Heathcote points Essential Reading to an item in The Australian, excerpted below:

Journalists have been pres­ented with an online form that asks reporters to list the “talent” interviewed in each news report, such as “non-European females” ­“European males” and “indigenous males”.

The ABC said it had started the initiative, known internally as the “on-screen diversity tracker” because of academic research showing that the media fails to reflect accurately the true ethnic make-up of society.

Some journalists at the ABC are unhappy with the form-filling and have privately attacked the initiative as a waste of time and tokenistic box-ticking.

ABC managing director Mich­elle Guthrie has made a commitment to diversity one of her central ambitions at the nat­ional broadcaster, and has a goal for the ABC to “look and sound like Australia”.

Need it be noted that editor-in-chief Guthrie’s notion of “diversity” seems not to include conservatives?

The Australian report can be read in full via the link below.

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