Andrew Jakubowicz inquires into why the media is not inquiring into diversity.

Australian racism and its regurgitation through the media, unfortunately, is failing to register on the radar of the Government’s Independent Media Inquiry. Instead, we’re hearing two things: that the Fourth Estate has gone feral (viz Murdoch’s hoons hunting for vulnerabilities wherever they can sniff them out), or that the Fourth Estate is nobly speaking truth to power and nothing should be changed (Murdoch’s champions defending their stalwart Australian independence and advancing the cause of freedom of the press).

Both are true, of course, or contain ribbons of truth, running like muscle fibres through the fat of self-promotion. The Australian media have proliferated extraordinarily over the past decade – or rather the media that Australians use have grown dramatically.

Where a decade ago we were primarily connected through newspapers, radio, four free-to-air TV channels, a small Foxtel network and internet web 1.0 (websites and newsletters), we are now in a dramatically more irradiated and interactive world.

The advent of web 2.0, with its opening up of user-generated content, has transformed the way in which information is collected, collated, processed and retransmitted. We are now each of us part of huge networks of association about which we are barely conscious. With 10 per cent of the world on Facebook and everyone no more than an average 4.7 degrees of separation apart, you may be closer to your most feared Other than you would ever guess.

But some things haven’t changed. Australians still have problems with cultural diversity. We are less interested than we were 10 years ago in learning languages other than our own family’s. Our antipathy to Muslims has grown and our confusion over the moral order and the future of the universe has deepened. We are fed up with wars that seem to go on forever, climates that keep getting more unpredictable, governments and oppositions that seem to have thrown their moral compasses overboard, and money that dissolves into tissue paper.

Our wealth is washing away as our mortgages increase. Our debt is rising, but so are our savings. Our cities are more polluted, more congested, more wearisome. Nothing seems to be solid – everything melts into air. Gold, US dollars, the Euro – none of it seems bankable. Parents know that their children’s futures are far less secure than they once might have been.

Why isn’t Australian racism and its regurgitation through the media a major issue for the Finkelstein inquiry? Why did the Australian government, when signing on to the European cyber-crime convention a couple of months ago, make the conscious decision to NOT sign on to the anti-racism addendum, leaving cyber-racism to rush unchallenged through the homes and schools of Australia? And why did it take me 13 years to get the Immigration Department to release (under Freedom of Information) its 1998 study of racism and Australian attitudes?

I’d say both questions elicit the same answer – one that Andrew Bolt, recently found to have racially vilified a group of Australian Indigenous leaders in his Herald Sun column and online, was able to pin down in 2001.

While he wrote in a caustic and dismissive style, Bolt’s insight allowed him to frame it rather too well: “…a land of heartless racists … we need a Republic because we’re ashamed of our racist past … Howard won the election because he’s a racist who got millions of racists to vote for him. Nasty country. Nasty voters.”

Bolt, of course, didn’t mean what he said, but he may have said what he secretly, unwillingly, realised.

We now do live in a world of instantaneous multi-directional communication. Most young Australians have Facebook pages, nearly all have SMS and web-capable smart phones. Fewer people under 30 read the press or watch “hard” news on ABC, SBS or the commercial networks, than get their “reality” fix from Biggest Loser or Master Chef.

According to Nielsen, young Australians spend longer on social media and the internet each month on average than young people anywhere else on earth; their cells are saturated from their immersion in the information/cyberbabble breaks on which they surf.

Some people in the mass media recognise that there is really no such thing as free speech – rather there’s a series of barriers and hoops through which people must stumble in order to be heard. Some ideas, values and voices get through fairly easily (mainly wealthy white males). Some voices rarely if ever are heard (poor immigrant or refugee women of colour).

In the new world of social media there are almost no barriers to entry – you can say anything. However, there may be an audience of only two: you and your shadow.

While the old media parry and thrust to protect their privilege, the new media have become a dangerous borderland. As the Finkelstein inquiry grinds on, some things and people will not be front of mind. Poor old Andrew Bolt, you were right, Australia today is not a pretty place.

Andrew Jakubowicz is Professor of Sociology at the University of Technology Sydney and Co-director of the UTS Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Key Research Strength (Research Centre). He is a chair of the NGO Institute for Cultural Diversity. He has published widely in the fields of cultural diversity, social policy, refugees, Jewish cultural studies, media sociology, and new media. The website that he co-ordinates Making Multicultural Australia in the 21st Century is designed for teachers and students interested in cross-curriculum diversity perspectives, and is produced in conjunction with state education and arts bodies around Australia.