Putting Indigenous rights on the news agenda | Global Journalism Seminar with Isabella Higgins, Europe correspondent, ABC News | Otter.ai

Putting Indigenous rights on the news agenda | Global Journalism Seminar with Isabella Higgins, Europe correspondent, ABC News

Reuters Institute1h

Caithlin Mercer

00:08

Hello, and welcome to the global journalism seminars at the Reuters Institute for the Study of journalism. I'm Caitlin Mercer, associate director of the fellowship program and joining us today is Isabella Hagen's, currently Europe correspondent for Australian broadcast Corporation's new section based in London. Isabella previously covered Indigenous Affairs for ABC News across online radio and television. And she's the daughter of a proud Torres Strait Islander family. Isabella joined the ABC in 2014 as a digital news reporter in Brisbane, and her work, including an important series on indigenous suicides won her a short form journalism award at the 2019 Walkley young Australian journalist of the Year awards, her internal seminar with our fellows in Trinity term this year, it was so highly rated that we knew we had to get her back for a global journalism seminar to discuss the do's and don'ts of Indigenous Affairs coverage. Isabella, thank you. Welcome. And thank you for your time today.

Isabella Higgins

01:10

Thank you for having me. That's quite a lot of pressure to deliver.

Caithlin Mercer

01:17

I think you can. So let's start nice and basic and tell us for those who aren't familiar with the beat. What does an Indigenous Affairs Correspondent cover

Isabella Higgins

01:29

Well, for me, the role was an enormous privilege and honor and before I get into the nuts and bolts of what I do every day, I'll explain why it was such an honor to do that. So my family from the Torres Strait Islands as you mentioned, it's a small group of islands on the very tip of Australia, so it's very warm, very tropical. If you think of palm trees and turquoise oceans and white sand. I'm painting a beautiful picture but there's there's also lots of crocodile crocodile sharks, some of which are my family totems, so it can be a little bit dangerous too. But Torres Strait Islander people they have been living there for centuries and centuries of a very rich culture. They're seafaring people. They're known for their dance for their song for their connection to the ocean and if anyone is at all familiar with Australia, or is perhaps a bit of a legal nerd it is where native title in Australia developed which is the legal recognition of Indigenous Australians occupation and ownership of the land. So a really important legal case that started there. I grew up in one of the big cities like so many Torres Strait Islander families. My family just made the choice the hard choice to move away for economic and social reasons. So myself I kind of grew up somewhere between you know, mainstream is really in cold to very connected to our Torres Strait side, but one of those people who sort of finds themselves somewhere in the middle all the time, got a bit of British and German ancestry as well as I fell into journalism, but I always had this burning passion to really tell the stories of First Nations people. And I ended up becoming the Indigenous Affairs correspondent for ABC News, which was a really big job and one that I felt daunted by all the time and always felt like I had a really heavy weight on my shoulders because it's really reset to begin Basque Country and there are hundreds of distinct different First Nations communities. I think that's a common misconception people have about Aboriginal people is it's one homogenous group. But when you think about how big Australia is, for centuries and centuries, all these different distinct groups of people lived alongside each other with their own culture, their own customs, sometimes that are incredibly different. So I always saw my job really, as a cross cultural communicator. As a cross cultural reporter. I have some knowledge and understanding of my own First Nations community, but I didn't have every other one. And I mean, hundreds of indigenous languages are spoken in this country. So I felt like I had to go in in some ways, much like anyone else would just with open eyes open ears, an open mind. I always try and learn a little bit of the language wherever I went. And it was a job where I covered TV, radio online and the stories were really, you know, everything from sort of daily political coverage of issues. Affecting indigenous people to longer form sort of features around suicide, health, inequities, justice issues, you know, Black Lives Matter and the conversation that was going on around that became a really big focal point. So justice issues were something that I was covering constantly. But my goal in that job always was to represent the diversity of this community. And I wanted to represent both the strength and the sorrow in these places. The fact that there are really devastating inequities and, you know, frankly lapses of human rights that exists in a rich and wealthy country like Australia, it's really important that we cover those that were critical of government values that we looking at why those things understand that we'd put a historical lens on them and explain why the issue exists. But I also always wanted to cover the strength, the enduring survival, the huge effort to make sure that language, culture customs dance, like these really rich and beautiful parts of all these different cultures that that was put on show and that you can see the incredible strength in these communities as well. There was so many incredibly strong women and as someone who was raised by a long line of really strong women, that was always my focus to was to elevate the voices of women and to show their strength and not just paint them as victims of a society and culture that didn't value them. So it was a job I loved. And yeah, really took me all over the country to many places that many Australians wouldn't go and that certainly aren't on the tourist trail.

Caithlin Mercer

06:14

And I think it's worth pointing out that this this, this beat is not unique to Australia as it

Isabella Higgins

06:22

novel First Nations people indigenous peoples live all over the world. I think some ones that were probably the most aware of are in North America, Canada, United. States, so many in South America, but also exist all throughout Asia as well. But I think when we talk about the issues that we we cover in Indigenous Affairs, some of those, you know, health education, economic justice inequities, they exist in a lot of communities all over the world. There's a lot of intersecting conversations and also when we think about the enduring legacy of colonization, the enduring legacy of displacement. It's quite similar to stories that you hear coming out of Africa, the Caribbean issues around reparations, apology, apologies for historical wrongs. So there's a lot of intersections in the reporting in the conversations that happen. But yes, indigenous peoples live all over the world. And sometimes it's striking how similar the experiences in all of those different places.

Caithlin Mercer

07:30

Yeah, yeah, I was editing a paper last term about the Sami people in Norway and Finland and remarkable how, how similar the issues are. Yeah. What's Australia's track record been like when it when it comes to covering Indigenous Affairs? What's the trainees track record been like?

Isabella Higgins

07:50

I think it's uncontroversial to say that it's really has a very bad track record of covering these issues and 101 1001 examples of how mainstream media have represented indigenous communities, Callie, I think, at its worst, journalists have treated indigenous people like zoo animals. And it's, I don't want to say that it's at its worst best, but there's often a phrase that gets used in Indigenous Affairs reporting by well meaning but poor reporting, where we describe people looking at indigenous people through a lens of the soft bigotry of low expectations. So that's a phrase that gets used quite a bit about indigenous reporting that we expect so little. We talk down on people. We don't treat them as humans, they're less than we other than them in the process. And I think that is one of the most common issues that we're probably trying to combat today. I think in the past it's been vitriolic it's been, you know, just there's no way you can argue that it's not racist, but today, the way we're, we're combating racism and stories. It's softer, it's a little bit more polite, but it very much still exists.

Unknown Speaker

09:13

So that sentence for me again,

Isabella Higgins

09:15

the soft, the soft bigotry of low expectations. I should say I've stolen that from an indigenous leader named Neil Pearson. I think he was the first person to say that and it's something that we really are trying to combat in the Australian space. I mean, I've done a lot of work. Looking through archives, just even for my own organizations, and there's examples of, you know, people standing over the graves of indigenous people talking about their criminal record, talking about how they were unlovable and these were things that were happening in the late 90s. It wasn't that long ago, but I mean, there are incidents that have happened in this century as well, where we've just used language. We've talked about people in such an othering fashion, we just haven't respected their voice or we've kind of used indigenous people as a nice curtain to someone's sort of journalistic passion project.

Caithlin Mercer

10:12

Yeah. How do you go about building trust and gaining access when these communities have probably very low trust after being treated that poorly?

Isabella Higgins

10:24

And I would say they've got good reason. Their lack of trust and I always I think most people in these communities like they've got a good radar like they can look at you pretty much straight up and know what you want from them. And I always say like, this isn't rocket science about how to how to be a good reporter in their space. Just show people respect. It actually is that easy. Go in and don't think you're the expert and put words in people's mouths and ask people how they want to tell their story like where is comfortable for them. Where would you like to sit down? In what in what format I often find the way we work in broadcast journalism, where you do a sit down interview and you put someone on one side and someone in the other is a really awful way to talk to people, especially in some indigenous communities where it's seen as disrespectful to look some people in the eye or to look someone in the eye who don't know very well. So sometimes I would sit next to someone while they were painting and I would just talk to them. I'd sit next to them in the car, we rig it up with GoPros and we'd have a conversation the way you probably do in a more normal day to day fashion. You know, like something that often that you sit down and just stare someone look them in the eyes and can't look away for 15 or 20 minutes and I know some people are very comfortable with it. But I think we've all had those moments where we feel uncomfortable with someone's piercing gaze. Yeah, let alone someone who perhaps you know English is a second or third language, someone who's talking about something incredibly traumatic. So I think there's ways that we can give people ownership over their stories. And I think as journalists, we're used to holding people to account and their government figures you know, business leaders, people who are who are paid to be accountable to the media, people who are trained to speak to the media. But we have to remember when we go into indigenous communities, they're not those people they are. They don't owe us anything like it's for them to choose whether they want want to tell us their story. So I always made a rule that I would go in and I would never I'm not someone who would ever promise like if you talk to me, this is going to lead to change. If you talk to me, and people are going to see this. I think I would always say I think it's really important. I think lots of people need to hear this story so that they can understand it. But I want them to be comfortable with the choice that they're making and not promise them anything. They've chosen to be there. And then give them some ownership and how they want to communicate and talk to me how much they want to say. And I think they're just basic principles of respect. I would often think that you know, if this was my mom, if this was my sister, how would I want someone else to treat them in this situation, especially on delicate issues? So don't think it has to be really hard. People don't expect you to know everything about their culture. When you've come in and you're an outsider. They just want you to show respect when they let you know what they are.

Caithlin Mercer

13:25

Yeah, it sounds like such a rich area so full of kind of diverse untold stories to waiting to be told. So if someone like me really wanted to go and do the Indigenous Affairs debate, can should a non Indigenous journalist cover Indigenous Affairs.

Isabella Higgins

13:47

I know that lots of people have different views about this. My personal view is that in the mainstream media in Australia, in in most of the world, there just aren't enough First Nations people there aren't enough First Nations journalists, and we can't sit and wait for the industry. To catch up to make sure that it's only indigenous people telling indigenous peoples stories. I think it's really important that everyone wants to do it that everyone does it respectfully. I think when we silo Indigenous stories as like only the indigenous reporters should do any indigenous story that becomes problematic. And it means we've kind of ostracized or carved off this niche where we don't do that about a lot of other communities or groups or say like, you know, only only people have health issues can report on health issues. I think it's really important. I think we need to build the literacy of non Indigenous reporters. But as I said, it doesn't. It's not rocket science. I think if people are respectful if they go in with the open mind that open ears, don't act like an expert people can do it in a way that's respectful they can do it in a way that is really helpful for the conversation. And it's building trust between the communities and the mainstream media. It's removing those lines of communication that haven't been there before. So I think it's really important that many, many people are telling them and I think sometimes when we say Oh, only indigenous reporters should cover these issues. It we almost make it feel like activism, and it's absolutely not reporting on human rights violations, reporting on people who've been let down by governments, by successive governments. by society. You know, why should that's not activism that's journalism at its best. Yeah. And I think it's important that everyone wants to tell those stories and sees how important they are and aren't intimidated by them, but just goes in with that respect.

Caithlin Mercer

15:51

He said the word siloed there, which leads me to the next question. Does having an Indigenous Affairs beat risk siloing the community from the wider news agenda?

Isabella Higgins

16:05

I think there's always a risk, but I think it is also really important to have specialists, sometimes a really complicated issues, and people who have a better understanding of the cultural landscape can go in and bring a specialist knowledge and specialist. I do find, you know, slightly problematic because, you know, I was born into this community does that make me a specialist? Well, not necessarily, but I think people who have a really good understanding of these issues have really good contacts. You can't get across some of these issues in an hour. That's why it's important to have specialists have people in rounds to people who know the context because I think sometimes we're at risk if we don't have that, that we rely on the same old voices to tell the story all the time. You know, we always if it's a story about one community, there's one community leader who always speaks and we're not representing all the voices in that community and often we're giving the microphone to the people who speak the loudest, the people who had the best thing to say, and I, I hate the perception sometimes that it's difficult to do this or so people don't want to talk to you. I think most of the time. We're just not passing the microphone around. We're giving it to the same people. And that's why I think it's important that we do have specialists. But as much as possible, everyone is engaging with these issues. And I should say that is my personal view. I know others who think like that, but I know other people who would like to see, you know, the indigenous led media for indigenous people. as well.

Caithlin Mercer

17:41

Is there any sort of generalized Indigenous Affairs, training for reporters ABC?

Isabella Higgins

17:51

There is a little bit and I think what the issue that we come up with in Australia in particular, and this is probably something that, you know, also exists around the world is that indigenous history wasn't particularly well taught in Australian schools. The conversations changed remarkably, in the last few decades. When we look back at history through a different lens, there's a lot of work being done in academia to challenge narratives that were perpetuated about indigenous people for decades and decades. So the issue is you have incredibly experienced incredibly intelligent people who just have this huge gap of knowledge. And it's difficult to put someone in a crash course and say, okay, like in two hours, you're going to come out you're going to be an indigenous expert. So definitely that we have cultural awareness training, you know, things like that, but it is. I would say the broader issue is society's lack of understanding of these issues. There is incredible material out there I think on most indigenous communities to catch yourself up. There's incredible nonfiction work fiction work movie, you know, there's so much out there if you do want to learn about this. And I think sometimes we can't just rely on organizations to provide that for us. As journalists, we should we should be hungry. We should want to know this.

Caithlin Mercer

19:23

Yeah, yeah. So the onus the responsibility, you can take personal responsibility for your own education. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That makes sense. I wanted to talk to you about climate journalism. In in what sense, do you see Indigenous Affairs and the unfolding climate crisis? What's the intersectionality there?

Isabella Higgins

19:49

The intersection is that indigenous communities will probably be some of the worst affected and the first affected. And I think the other intersection is that there are incredible solutions in indigenous communities. It's becoming a broader, more mainstream conversation around indigenous fire management after the horrific 2019 bushfire season and people really wanted to start and learn and engage with traditional knowledge of Land Management, how to use fire to combat fire, and that's really taking off in some parts of Australia. Also, there's a there's a growing conversation around what foods what crops we grow. There's a push towards having more native products. It's still a really small market in in many ways. And I think that's where there's solutions and that's really where we can turn to indigenous communities to not just feed the media but to feed society to feed government responses, and it's happening on a small scale but also there. When we think about where some indigenous communities are in Australia, they're in the middle of the desert. There are low lying islands, not all of them, but some of them. These are the places where it's going to get incredibly hot where see what is going to rise where my family from there's already instances of water rising, washing away, cemeteries are washing away cultural artifacts. There's a real fear that these places won't be inhabitable. And there is action being taken in the Torres Strait there's legal action being taken but they will be the first and hardest hit and that's the saddest thing for the people who've probably contributed the least and it's such an ongoing issue that housing in these places is not adequate. A lot of the time, indigenous people were moved relocated around different homelands and then the housing that they were put into is just completely deficient. You know, it's it's not got airflow light. It's it's not going to withstand any sort of climate challenges. So they're really at the face of it. And I think there's some incredible solutions that we probably should be turning to there as well.

Caithlin Mercer

22:10

Yeah. And when you talk about solutions and solutions, journalism, constructive journalism, there has been some some research that points to minority communities and indigenous communities really appreciating the style of journalism and engaging with finally not being the object of bad news stories is Have you had any experience of that in the field?

Isabella Higgins

22:36

We always tried to do solutions journalism where possible, and it wouldn't. It wasn't necessarily that you fully had to swap hats and be like today's a solutions journalism day. Sometimes it would just be when you were doing a story that laid out a really complicated problem. within it. You included what the indigenous communities possible solution was what people were pitching what they wanted to see happen. That was a way to put that solution in there to highlight indigenous voices, to not make it feel like it's a story of doom and gloom, but to show people are thinking about it and thinking about it critically. They just need resources a lot of the time. But also, sometimes we would get we would just try and really capture that strengthen their community as well, and show how people were solving problems in their community to show that they're not sitting around and waiting for the government to do it. They're not sitting and waiting around for other leaders to do it. Yeah, they're moving and they're acting but if you give them a bit of help, imagine the scale at which this change can happen. And there's really incredible work happening even in you know, the mainstream education sector in Australia. We've got more indigenous teachers, more indigenous principals who are leading schools and the work they do in some of these places is extraordinary just by getting these people into schools and being leaders in schools, you see real change, and there's still an absolute shortage of indigenous principles in Australian schools, but I met several and it was extraordinary what they were doing. It was always one of the stories where if I was feeling really down or weighed down by the round or feeling like I couldn't please anyone or it was all too hard. I'd be like I need to go to a school. I need to see the spirit of these gorgeous indigenous cares and I need to see the incredible teachers who are trying to change their lives and you would just live so uplifted I'd be on a high for a few days be re energized by their their zest for life.

Caithlin Mercer

24:36

That's a really good tip for managing your well being is it June? Yeah.

Isabella Higgins

24:40

To do the nice stories. The heavy ones Yeah,

Caithlin Mercer

24:44

give yourself a break. Yeah. I, I wonder. I mean, you've, you've actually already mentioned quite a few lessons there. But I'm wondering if it's worth saying directly. What are the lessons that can be learned from a career in Indigenous Affairs coverage that apply to other minority communities?

Isabella Higgins

25:06

I think it's, I know I've said this about 10 times, but I think it is about going in and not thinking you're the expert. And I think sometimes journalists were really bad for doing that. We do think we're the expert. We go in we think we know what the story is going to be. And it's being humble enough to listen and accept that your hypothesis might be wrong. And yeah, to challenge yourself and not try and find someone who matches your view or matches your hypothesis, but speak widely to people in communities. Don't rely on speaking to one person, that there are often people in all of these minority communities who have cultural leadership and it's really important to speak to them to respect that cultural leadership. But I would always find the views of men in power and women who are dealing with a different side of the problem or a different side of the community would often have a really different experience and a really different view. And I wouldn't always want to talk on camera, but it was important to hear that and to know that you weren't that you're not homogenizing a community based on what one person says and I think I know I'm guilty of doing it throughout my career. I know. Yeah. And I think that is the biggest challenge we have working in minority spaces is not homogenizing and having a diversity of perspectives within a community and not making out like its dissent but making out that it's healthy debate and representing it and showing the nuance the gray area and that it's not so black and white. Yeah, a lot of these issues.

Caithlin Mercer

26:56

Yeah. For those who are on the call, I'd love to invite you to put your questions for Isabella in the q&a box. And we will go to our fellows downstairs in a second. But let me just start with a question from Ted Sullivan. Who says do we eventually need to reconcile our modern way of life with that of indigenous people? And is that possible?

Isabella Higgins

27:20

So very big question is. I think there's a lot of ways that the modern society we live in and traditional and indigenous values can be reconciled

Isabella Higgins

27:35

in Australia. There's very big conversations going on around things like constitutional recognition. And I think people often wonder, you know, what, what is the tangible value of this? Well, the tangible value is you recognize indigenous cultural leadership and you allow people to behave in that fashion to have power autonomy, agency over their own lives and their own community. And that's what things like constitutional change in shrining indigenous leadership into Australia's Constitution. It is a very academic and legal way that we allow indigenous culture to thrive and survive within Australia. And through that. You hope that they can live alongside each other and perhaps as time goes on. They don't feel so distinctly different, but they're comfortable neighbors. I would say. I think when we look at things like the way we live, what we eat, they are ways that we can really shift help our country, help our climate by trying to live or grow things that are supposed to be there. And I think that is such an important lesson in this century as we face the climate crisis. Do we need to be eating wait in Australia, could we be harvesting things like kangaroo grass that can be turned into flour? There's there's some really big questions like that and I think we haven't really confronted them or in a really meaningful way in Australia but I hope we start to Yeah,

Caithlin Mercer

29:26

yeah. Let's go to town boy downstairs from Saturday media in India. Can I ask you a question? Hi, hi, Isabella, thank

Speaker 1

29:36

you for your time and wisdom. I was struck by something that you said early on about the risk of treating indigenous communities as one homogenous group. And this is a risk isn't it with with all underrepresented communities, and I'm wondering if you have some advice on how journalists could stop themselves from falling into this trap specifically, what

Speaker 2

29:59

practices would be embrace in your day to day work rituals.

Isabella Higgins

30:07

I always think when I was doing Indigenous stories, and even when I was covering the Queen's death, and we're sort of trying to capture the views of different communities in in the UK, it was about not just having, you know, one token diverse person or one token indigenous person. It was about having two or three voices and looking at them and thinking, are they a different age? Are they different genders? Do they live different lifestyles? Do they have different levels of education? And I think those it helps you pick different people who have a really different experience of the world and helps you to get a much richer view of the issue you're trying to dissect and explore. So I think it's applying a few different principles of diversity to a story that is about underrepresented or minority groups as well. And in that community. Sorry, I'm

Caithlin Mercer

31:14

on mute. rookie error. Johnny from the BBC. Do you want to go for your question?

Speaker 3

31:22

Yeah. Thanks, Caitlin. I'm Hi Isabella, thank you so much. I'm echo Tommy says I felt good to have you here. I was born in Australia, although I grew up in Ireland and I live in and so I've sort of settled across everything. What I'm interested in asking you is a fact about yourself. So it's obviously fantastic. To have the stories of indigenous First Peoples the people across the word, equity, fantastic to have somebody from that community in a position of influence as opposed to be able to tell them stories, them or several candid stories, but is there a danger? of reporters from any protected characteristics or diverse background being pigeonholed or typecast? into just do stories about those areas, and your echo your background, your LGBT reporters or disabled reporters just been pigeon holed into stories like that. And it gets just to distill it down is there is there many indigenous people in Australia or an ABC that would be considered mainstream reporters or journalists and given the opportunity to do stories outside of where they're from?

Isabella Higgins

32:47

Thank you. I think that's an important question. And absolutely, I'll saris Sorry, I just had a slight internet issue. I think it's really important question, and I think there's absolutely a risk that indigenous reporters or anyone from a diverse background is siloed. I think as long as people are passionate and want to be reporting on that round, it's okay to be not to feel the need to do something else. But it is a real challenge, I think to get indigenous journalist journalists from other diverse backgrounds into senior positions. That's something that's an ongoing challenge so that we get people in in sort of junior pay bands. And then if they work in Indigenous Affairs, it can be a completely thankless space it can be it can wear you out spiritually at the end of the day, you don't get to leave your work at home. And I think that's, I mean, I was speaking to a Ukrainian friend who was talking about the difficulties of this you don't get to leave your story at home when it's your community. It's our job. It's not just professional. You get this real spiritual corruption where you've, you really carry the weight of all of it and it becomes really, really heavy. And difficult. And that's certainly something I felt towards the end of my four year stint doing Indigenous Affairs. And I was lucky that I had people around me managers who were supportive of me doing other things, because I don't know if I could have kept doing it at the speed and capacity I was for years and years and years. And I think maybe if I had I would have just become so burnt out and left. And I think that's a challenge we have, particularly when we bring in people and they're working in what is largely an all white space and having to fit in and interface with that cohort of people at work. But then we expect them to be this, you know, to heal the wounds of the past to go into indigenous communities and do what you know. The most experienced reporters can't do so it's a really heavy weight. I think that people from diverse communities carry I think we're getting we've made a lot of gains in the last 10 years at the ABC in terms of having reporters of indigenous background. People living with a disability from many different diverse culturally linguistic groups. But we have trouble with retention. And I think it is to do with the heavy weight that they carry. And the fact that they don't just get to come and be a journalist. They have to be a cross cultural communicator that they might deal with discrimination in the workplace. That then they have to go and confront really difficult issues in these communities. So it's an ongoing challenge. And I think one of the answers is pushing more people from different backgrounds into senior management and senior leadership. Because I think they're more cognizant, more understanding of those issues. And I also do think it's important that you've got people all of those backgrounds who do do mainstream reporting, political reporting, sports reporting, because you just get a richer perspective got people with richer context is not just about doing the right thing by diverse people. It actually makes our content better. We better represent our audience. We better represent issues. We're more diverse in our voices in coverage. I think it's a survival mechanism for public broadcasters. More than it is this nice kind of lefty idea or the right thing to do. Yeah, I feel like I went on a bit of a rant there but

Caithlin Mercer

36:42

let's stay on this rant for a second because I how do I phrase this? There's I, I'm from South Africa. You're from Australia. And I think in some of the other former colonies, like Canada, there's still this perception that you kind of have to go and do a stint in Europe. And then and then you're the real deal. To this might be a bit too personal but do you feel that weight at all of like having to go and do the Europe stunt to kind of prove to kind of prove your mettle when actually you were doing such important and profound work back home? And this is a leading question, but let me just stop there and let you respond.

Isabella Higgins

37:41

I would say that I did feel like other people. viewed me without a lot of legitimacy. Probably when I did Indigenous Affairs. I think I often felt like people recognize the work I was I was doing was difficult. Maybe sometimes they recognized that it was good. But I don't think they really saw me as like a hard edgy reporter who could do it all. And ultimately, the reason I wanted to come to Europe was because I wanted to challenge myself and I wanted a break. And maybe I had started to believe that to maybe I'd started to believe I could only be good at doing Indigenous Affairs reporting. So I wanted to challenge myself and maybe I was trying to prove people wrong. I'm not. I'm not sure but I will say nothing was ever as hard as being the Indigenous Affairs reporter that I mean, just the way the burden the relentlessness. It was so heavy and a lot of the time like I am just it is such a thrilling and exciting job to be in Europe. It's going into holiday. By that I mean it was pretty horrific, you know, going to Ukraine and seeing what's happening there and seeing that humans can do that to other humans. But yeah, I do think that is something that indigenous reporters face. And it's, I think goes to that that point I was making earlier where I think sometimes in journalism we view reporting on diverse communities as a form of activism or something that's not hard or ajnr for is a bit soft. And as I said they're often human rights violations. They're the worst sort of government failures yet we don't want to view it through that lens and I just asked people to ask themselves like why do you think that other than that the people have brown skin? Because so often we'd report on issues and if it was happening in a city to white people, it would be on every major newspaper. It wouldn't be leading bulletins in the news, but because it was happening to black and brown people in far flung corners of the country, no one wanted to care. So I challenge people to ask themselves why they think that about reporting on on many of these issues that aren't just indigenous issues, but on many of those diverse and underrepresented communities.

Caithlin Mercer

40:08

Yeah, and Isabella is not saying this. I am saying this. Not as well. But I would say that I feel like you have all this pressure like to go to Europe and prove yourself and then you get to Europe and you're like, oh, oh, these guys have the same problems. It's not all perfect. Yeah. Anyway, sorry. That's not from Isabella. That's just my opinion. I want to read your question from EULA Rocha. They say we see indigenous people taking the ownership of their narratives. Many of them are no longer interested in having their stories told by us journalists. As they now have cameras, mobile phones, social media platforms, and even independent channel, media India to tell their stories. How do you see this? And in this context, how do you see the role of journalism and I'll add on to that the explosion of indigenous content on Tik Tok has just been so incredible to watch. Is it? Are you seeing the same thing?

Isabella Higgins

41:13

Absolutely. And I think it's an important shift and in many ways it's a correction. For so long these groups couldn't represent themselves and so I think it's natural that they now want to and that they don't necessarily want to engage the mainstream media. And I think it is really important for those communities that they can see themselves in a really unfiltered way. I do think the role that indigenous led media plays is quite different to that that the mainstream media plays and I think it is more important than ever that every journalist is building contacts in with indigenous communities, with people from diverse communities. And perhaps that we start building media literacy, we explain what what we're asking of people. We think about what we're asking people I mean, sometimes if you think about what you know, a daily TV newspaper, give someone like an hour and a half, so that I've noticed if they're lucky, and you want them for like 20 seconds of their time, and you know, we'll 20 seconds of TV time, but you kind of asking them for about three hours of their mental space while they think about what they're going to do while they sort of accommodate you while you're there. While they're doing the interview. Like is there a better way we can work so that we're not burdening ordinary people all the time? I don't know. I but I feel like maybe there is. And so I just I think we do face a really big challenge in in mainstream media organizations to persuade people that we are the best place for their stories, that they can feel authentic, like the stories be explained in their own words and their own voice. And it's a real challenge. I don't think there's easy answers there. And I think all you can do is point people to the work that you've done in the past, be really upfront with them. What what what they're going to look like in your story, you know, what, who they're going to be sitting alongside those sorts of things. But I think it's important that those groups see themselves in those ways. Because I think that's a representation that people like me didn't have when they were growing up. You know, they couldn't open up social media and see 100 people who look like them. You had to wait until they came on the TV. Every you know, few months.

Caithlin Mercer

43:49

Yeah. It's gonna you see from Finland.

Speaker 4

43:57

Yeah, thank you. Hello. Use the container. Thank you very much for talking to us today. And speaking of mainstream media organizations, arguing imagine that covering indigenous people or something that journalists everywhere, have a lot to learn. But in my experience, journalists and newsrooms seem to be quite reluctant to accept that their coverage has been maybe less than ideal in the past or currently, and I think it's mainly stems from fear of being seen racist. And I think like you said earlier, lots of this coverage. today comes from the recruiting tensions and I think the notion of soft bigotry of low expectations was really spot on. So my question to you is, have you witnessed this kind of reluctance? And do you have any thoughts on how to overcome if you have experienced

Isabella Higgins

44:58

Yeah, the reluctance? I know it will. It was my greatest challenge to overcome it. And I found that often my greatest challenge was to overcome this notion in newsrooms that people wouldn't be interested in the stories of these communities. Yeah, you know, like, our, you know, would people even read that and, like, to me, I'd want to scream and be like, well, it's a story that's got every human emotion like this is an incredible story. Why would you think that except that they don't look exactly like you? And I think the way we change it is you do reporting that is compelling and that people that so many people do engage with it, that you kind of start smashing those notions out of the water. And I think we started doing that at the ABC we had these huge runaway successes and I don't ever want to think that, you know, like a success means that it got a lot of clicks online, or, you know, a lot of people gave me good feedback about it. But it was sort of like the sad means to the end, in some ways that you had to prove that it was a good story. And for me, I always felt like I was working, you know, 30% harder to figure out how the production, how the narrative would stack up who the voices were going to be. It usually meant working later and longer because I felt like I couldn't rely on just doing an ordinary story. I had to make it better, so that people would respect the content and that is part of the onus and burden that I think indigenous reporters or people who are working in this space often feel and I just hope that if we start doing enough stories that people love and engage with and I think when we start doing things like solutions journalism, like when we were doing stories about traditional fire management, everyone wanted to read them because everyone wanted to know how that how does this work? Is it something I could do? Was it something we could do more broadly because everyone wants to know how you might be able to combat these things. So I think it's finding those intersections. Finding thinking about what, what sort of in the public discourse and how you can bring indigenous voices that like in the fire example. But yeah, it is a real challenge. On my set that sometimes

Caithlin Mercer

47:25

we say on the climate journalism network, every story has a climate story. And I think to a degree, there's sort of there's a there's an element of every every story is an indigenous story, or could be, yeah, well, we've got the camera where it is, I think certain caveats question kind of relates to this, and perhaps what you've said as part of the answer, but suncat, do you want to ask your question?

Speaker 5

47:53

Yeah, my question is somewhat related to users. So my question is, how should journalists convince the editors or at least get their buy in that the minority groups are worth covering all my masking as a reporter from an ethnic Chinese language daily in Singapore, that covers mostly issues that are not in the Catholic tradition, but the majority in Singapore so I'm just wondering what

Isabella Higgins

48:22

will my view always is like we can't we can't rely on people thinking it's the right thing to do. We need to persuade people by saying, are in a bit of a fight for survival at the moment for eyeballs for viewership. And there is a very real argument that by representing different communities, we are hopefully going to bring new rules we're going to be more relevant to more communities. And that means the survival of our organizations because ultimately, we need people engaging with us. We need people not just in a city elites or you know, different, you know, traditional news audiences. We need to be appealing to new people if we want our organizations to survive. And I think that's a really important argument. And we can talk about how many people these issues affect the intersect intersectionalities with other communities, and that is almost the most powerful weapon we have is we're doing a story that maybe we haven't done all the time. And hopefully with it, we bring in new audience who aren't engaging with us already. That was something that I would always try to use. I mean, in the organization, I was really trying to engage people who lived in outer suburban parts of big cities. So I would try and find stories in those places. And maybe a year or two before they wouldn't have been commissioned by because we were desperately trying to get new audiences in some places. And I think if you're talking about you know, minority Chinese communities, I mean, that's how many people from those communities are there around the world. I mean, how can you that's a lot of eyeballs that you can potentially bring to a to an organization.

Caithlin Mercer

50:18

Yeah, new new audience segment and young audience segments are two major things that seem to open a lot of it's kind of breath from the US. Brett's operating the camera and asking questions at the same time

Speaker 6

50:35

with us here, and thank you for being here to discuss these issues. Now that

Unknown Speaker

50:42

you cover Europe,

Speaker 6

50:44

if you've seen any overlap in terms of the coverage that other people have done or that you've been doing in Europe, around migration and the coverage that you were doing, with a weapon of indigenous communities.

Isabella Higgins

50:59

Do you mean sort of the because I think in what I observe is that people rely on the same stereotypes. Probably the same sort of veiled polite vitriol as well where I think there are small words that can other communities really easily and I think in many ways, media performers have become very good at using them to harness audiences to incite fear, or, or, or hatred, frankly, in some instances against certain communities. And that, I think is is quite a universal experience for many diverse communities when they're being reported upon. And sadly, you know, we've got, you know, people who use that sort of public rhetoric are often people who are in positions of power. So there's a real challenge for journalists to challenge the language and to challenge the narrative. And also, I think the Another commonality I see is, is sort of the way we often do, you know, and it's really we call it car crash reporting, where you report on numbers and figures, you know, 300 people have moved here. 25 people died in the channel, you know, so that really, by fixating on the numbers, we really dehumanize the issues, and I think that is something that

Speaker 7

52:35

will say, Well, yeah, very well said.

Isabella Higgins

52:39

I'm not sure if that answered your question.

Unknown Speaker

52:43

Yeah, sounds great. Thanks.

Caithlin Mercer

52:46

Thanks, Brett. We've got two more questions, but I think I'm going to ask them just to so we can fit both in. The second last question comes from Joseph here from Hungary. She's working on a project about the representation of Roma people in Hungary. And she asks, Is it helpful when indigenous people establish their own media to talk about their stories from their own perspective? Or is Do you see a disadvantage to that approach?

Isabella Higgins

53:15

I think it's hugely advantageous for the community and I think it's really important that they exist in Australia. There's the national indigenous TV network, they have an online presence as well, but also throughout the country. There's lots of small radio stations. And I think, the way they operate who they are, their audience is different. I think they profile stories about strength and struggle really well. I think they're more willing to talk about the winds of their community, the language they use is different. I think it's incredibly important for those communities to have that representation. And I also think there are just more spaces for indigenous voices there. There's more opportunities for different segments of the community to tell their story and to share it with people who are engaged. I don't think it makes the work of mainstream organizations any less valuable. Our audience is different. I think we need to give ourselves a really high benchmark of what we're doing, but I don't think I think the two should coexist and can coexist and I think in many ways, serve different purposes. I think it's great if they I think it's great if, you know, these sorts of communities can turn to mainstream media feel represented learn something about themselves or learn something about their community and feel respected. But I think it's really important that there's other outlets for different types of storytelling.

Caithlin Mercer

54:44

There's, I mean, this is a big question, and I don't expect you to have an answer off the cuff. It's probably a journalism research question, but if if the role of that independence, indigenous owned media is a sense of identity, what is the role of mainstream media?

Isabella Higgins

55:04

Well, I think mainstream media has a job as a better we have a duty, I think, to educate. And I think we have a duty to bring with us a lot of historical context and to explain issues better. I think, naturally, if you are in those indigenous spaces, a lot of that is understood. You can get into into details you can tell parts of the story, that you're not going to get into mainstream media, but the mainstream media has a duty to explain how we got here. You know, it's we don't have absolutely chronic over representation of indigenous people in Australian prisons, just by accident that didn't happen because of policies. That have been in place for five or 10 years. It's got to do with the history of the country, the way the country was colonized. And it's the duty of those mainstream media of mainstream media to fill in the gaps in our education in many ways. To give people the context and understanding of these issues and people who don't live and breathe it every day. So I think they can play really different roles and both are of equal importance,

Caithlin Mercer

56:18

right, inform the electorate and contribute to the public agenda mainstream and indigenous, in depth, home identity forming.

Isabella Higgins

56:29

And I think in mainstream media, I never thought I would become frustrated by this because I think we assume that our audience isn't indigenous. Yeah, and I would, when I was doing throws, I would try and write it in a way that if people didn't understand, hopefully, they get the context. But if you do really understand there's more in the story for you, as well. There's more in there that you might learn that you if you're following it, you understand these incremental, incremental updates. Yeah. And it's a challenge to try and write for both of those audiences, but I think we can do it. I think it's totally possible, but I do think they play distinct and important roles as to segments of the media.

Caithlin Mercer

57:11

Great answer. UNC from Singapore gets the last question. How do you write about the very real issues that diverse or minority communities face without coming across as blaming them? For instance, some communities may be over represented in drug or prison figures, but highlighting this could cause people to think about the communities negatively.

Isabella Higgins

57:34

Well, that's a challenge. And I think it goes to context and explanation and I think it goes to the way we frame stories as well the sorts of headlines we put on them. The tone in which we write it, I think, we can write stories in a way where we're not blaming or painting a broad brush stereotype. But where you are explaining and unpacking how these things have come to be you can have people in the space explaining what the issues are, the sort of cross the things that needs to be addressed to challenge or to stop that over representation. So I think it's all in the language. And I think it's often also all in who we choose who we asked to talk about these things as well. And I think humanizing those stories is really important, because it's important for everyone else. To see. Here. This is human that's human lives. It's not numbers. It's not some scary mythical community who live on the other side of the city to you. They're just people who, because of their circumstances in life, their life didn't end up like yours. And it's important that other people to understand that so I think there's a lot of things you can do to get into gritty issues without blaming or stereotyping. But it is a fine line sometimes I think, and I just think we need to be always really hyper aware of the language we're using. And there's been plenty of instances where I can think where I've lost battles with headline writers and I'm not totally happy with them and their fights. I didn't win them all. Yeah,

Caithlin Mercer

59:24

Isabella, thank you so so much for teaching us so much in one hour. I feel like we've had a master class and very inspiring master class. I'm taking away the soft bigotry of low expectations. I think I might get that tattooed somewhere. That's brilliant. But it's still I'm just passing the knowledge on. Isn't that what we all do? And thank you, thank you. Thank you. We're not here next week. We're back the week after on the second of November with Hamid Mir. The last minute interview Osama bin Laden currently covering the floods in Pakistan for some very interesting insights on climate journalism in Pakistan. Isabella, thank you. Thank you, and stay in touch. You're part of the family now.

Isabella Higgins

01:00:15

Oh, thank you to everyone. For listening to my voice for an hour.

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