TY - JOUR
T1 - Overshadowed voices in media reporting on truth-telling commissions
AU - Skogerbø, Eli
AU - McCallum, Kerry
AU - Dreher, Tanja
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors received financial support for the research, authorship, and publication for this article: The Silent Voices project (in Norwegian: De tause stemmene) was supported by the Council for Applied Media Research/The Norwegian Media Authority. The Breaking Silences: Media and the Child Abuse Royal Commission project was supported by by the Australian Research Council, DP190101282.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.
PY - 2024/9
Y1 - 2024/9
N2 - Over the past decades, truth-telling commissions aimed at uncovering, confronting and providing justice for the past treatment of children have been established in many countries, including the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (RCIRCSA 2013-2017) and the Norwegian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) (2018-2023). Journalism plays important roles both in triggering commissions of inquiry and in attracting public attention to their work and findings. This paper investigates media reporting on the RCIRCSA and the TRC. The Commissions were not similar in scale, scope or legal powers, however, they both generated spaces for public listening to stories about the consequences of past policies and present practices of child removal, abuse and racism that potentially could change the grand narratives of each nation. Our findings suggest that future commissions should pay particular attention to the structural power of news logics and mediation. We find, despite the widely different cases, consistent patterns of uneven and hierarchical media reporting and overshadowing of First Nations voices and aspirations.
AB - Over the past decades, truth-telling commissions aimed at uncovering, confronting and providing justice for the past treatment of children have been established in many countries, including the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (RCIRCSA 2013-2017) and the Norwegian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) (2018-2023). Journalism plays important roles both in triggering commissions of inquiry and in attracting public attention to their work and findings. This paper investigates media reporting on the RCIRCSA and the TRC. The Commissions were not similar in scale, scope or legal powers, however, they both generated spaces for public listening to stories about the consequences of past policies and present practices of child removal, abuse and racism that potentially could change the grand narratives of each nation. Our findings suggest that future commissions should pay particular attention to the structural power of news logics and mediation. We find, despite the widely different cases, consistent patterns of uneven and hierarchical media reporting and overshadowing of First Nations voices and aspirations.
KW - Australia
KW - First Nations
KW - Norway
KW - RCIRCSA
KW - TRC
KW - truth-telling commissions
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85203050772&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/01634437241276125
DO - 10.1177/01634437241276125
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85203050772
SN - 0163-4437
SP - 1
EP - 17
JO - Media, Culture and Society
JF - Media, Culture and Society
ER -