Silences of the media: whiting out Aboriginality in making news and making history

Abstract

This article examines the disjunctures in representations of indigenous Australian histories in the Australian media. In this article we attempt to align stories of the past with present narratives of nationhood in a radical manner so as to uncover the modes of institutionalized silences which govern public discourses with regard to Aboriginal histories. By focusing on the media coverage of the Port Arthur incident in Tasmania, where a lone gunman killed 35 people, we examine the construction of silences around Aboriginal massacres in the public sphere.