Well, I suppose if news is entertainment, what does it matter if you've got white, green or pink faces on the box? News hasn't been 'news' for 20 years. It's almost all entertainment. TV News is simply the serious side of the entertainment business who's prime function is to hold the 6.00 pm audience as long as possible.

It's true that people may be effected by media content, but how do we know? We stopped studying cognitive psychology and media analysis when cultural studies replaced it in the curriculum.

Darn that's cynical of me but I've written enough freelance feature articles to have about 50 percent of them knocked back (which is OK) only to find a small percentage of the knock backs reappear almost verbatim as background or under someone else's byline. Ouch.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

The so called daily media regard and treat the ethnic media with considerable disdain. Put that aside for now. The daily media, print and electronic, are in the main white anglo saxon protestant celtic, and ethnic Australians rarely do well with these organisations. Some indeed are even targeted with a view to their professional demise. But let's also put that aside for now.
Then we have the local media, some of which is very good but a good deal of which leaves much to be desired. Certainly their support of ethnic communities can be amongst the lowest of the low, even worse than the daily media in certain cases. But again, let's not waste time proving how correct this statement is, for now.
We could then turn our heads to the appointments made by governments of both major political flavour to the Courts, to tribunals, to the RBA and Telstra Boards, to hospital and university boards... in fact to a very broad variety of such important bodies. yet the number of ethnic Australians who are so appointed could be counted with single digits in so many cases, if the number is even that high.
But of course it is not as if the ethnic populations of Australia include people who have run companies, who have several degrees, who have experience in pioneering roles... Right?
So my question to readers becomes a simple one. How do we fix this pathetic state of affairs?

Take a look at most of the hospitals, the universities and a lot of people who work in accountancy and commerce generally. You'll find that the ethnic minorities are actually very well represented.

Ange,
In Qld it's compulsory to have an 8 % indigenous component in the public sector work force. Merit is of no consequence, the same as for caucasians.

woo hoo!! public service jobs ... that'll make up for 200 years of dispossession.

David Jennings,
Put your money where your mouth is and employ some indigenous.