Media Hierarchies of Attention: News Values and Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

ABSTRACT

Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2013–17) was a highly significant legal exercise that devoted considerable expertise and resources to bearing witness and breaking silences surrounding child sexual abuse in all of its 57 case studies. In analysing the national media coverage we take a critical position to ask to what extent was this groundbreaking exercise in listening for justice reflected or amplified via mainstream news? A rich tradition of journalism and media studies contributes to the findings that routine patterns of media (in)attention produced asymmetries, with highly personalised church “scandals” drawing so much focus that they overshadowed institutional reviews and cases involving some of the most vulnerable and marginalised victims and survivors, with the effect of sidelining institutional responses designed to prevent child sexual abuse in future.

KEYWORDS:

• Listening
• media and marginalisation
• news values
• Royal Commission into institutional Responses to child sexual abuse
• media monitoring
• media scandal
• hierarchies of attention

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at The Politics of Listening conference convened by Tanja Dreher (UNSW) and Poppy de Souza (Griffith University), held at the University of New South Wales, 29–30 November 2018. We are grateful to conference delegates for their generous feedback and to the anonymous reviewers who have contributed much to our thinking.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Lisa Waller http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2689-8010

Tanja Dreher https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2403-1007

Kristy Hess http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3027-7492

Kerry McCallum https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7567-2125

Eli Skogerbø https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6803-5021

Notes

1 The apology was reported throughout the world by major media outlets. Examples include The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/22/world/australia/sexual-abuse-apology-scott-morrison.html, Britain’s Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/10/22/australian-prime-minister-scott-morrison-holds-back-tears-emotional/ and Singapore’s Straits Times https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/australianz/australian-pm-offers-national-apology-to-child-sex-abuse-victims.

2 The commission was established following revelations of child abusers being moved from place to place instead of their abuse and crimes being reported. There were also relevations that adults failed to try to stop further acts of child abuse. The commission examined the history of abuse in educational institutions, religious groups, sporting organisations, state institutions and youth organisations.

3 According to Golding (2018, 192), the term ‘care leavers’ is widely used to refer to people who were raised in orphanges, children’s homes and foster care.

4 In 2012 veteran police officer Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox who had investigated countless cases of child sexual abuse in his 30-year career went to the news media with disturbing claims of systemic cover-up of institutional child abuse. Without his courageous intervention arguably there would have been no Royal Commission. See https://www.blueknot.org.au/GET-INVOLVED/Blue-Knot-Day/Blue-Knot-Awards/Blue-Knot-Award-2013

5 Examples include Canada’s 2008 Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Residential Institutions used by the Municipality of Oslo, 1954–1993: Inquiry into Abuse, Neglect, Supervision and Forced Placements (2003–2005); Ireland’s Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (2000–2009); The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States 1950–2010 (2006–2011) and the Macur Review, Wales UK (2012–2016). For a comprehensive listing see http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/research/ageofinquiry/browse_inquiries.htm.

6 During the late 1990s and early 2000s allegations of child sexual abuse in Australia surfaced in the Catholic Church. Some of these led to a number of convictions, trials and ongoing investigations into allegations of sex crimes committed against children by priests and other church personnel.

7 Personal correspondence, Mr Phillip Reed, RCIRCSA Chief Executive Officer, 28 June, 2017. CEO granted access to the isentia media reports on the grounds that isentia was acknowledged in any publication.

 

Additional information

Funding

The research presented here is funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project (DP190101282) “Breaking silences: Media and the Child Abuse Royal Commission” (2019–21).