Abstract:
Australia's media accountability systems (M*A*S) include the Australian
Press Council, broadcasting self-regulatory schemes, public broadcasting
charters, the Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance (MEAA) Code of
Ethics, journalism education and training programmes and organisations
devoted to critiquing and enhancing the media. The explicit or implicit
purpose of these systems is to enable the media to play its role in representative
democracy, ensuring citizens can obtain information and communicate.
So it is against these broader democratic goals that M*A*S and
journalism itself must finally be evaluated. One way of doing this is to
look at the end product-the media content produced by journalists-and
examine how it reflects and responds to sources and events beyond the
media itself. To explore further the implications of such an approach, in
this article I have chosen a single case study-the Australian media's coverage
of Aboriginal deaths in custody over a 20-year period.
