O'SHANE LAMENTS "DUMBING DOWN" OF MEDIA COVERAGE

While presenting the 1997 Munster Award for Freelance Journalism at the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, Ms O'Shane commented: "We simply are not being informed of the real issues that are at stake when we are talking about Aboriginal affairs, but most particularly the stolen children and the native title legislation. What we do get is a reportage of the politicking that goes on between the two major parties ... What we don't have ... as distinct from freedom of the press, is the freedom of the likes of you and me to have our views heard.

" ... We have to resist with all our might and main any attempt to take us back to that kind of a past where people were ... denied access to the community at large, denied a place in the sun, on the basis of colour alone ...We have to resist with everything - our intelligence, our ability to walk down the street, to march in protest at the kinds of things that they are doing, to go to meetings on the lawns of Parliament House, to sit in the galleries of the Senate and the House of Representatives, to make our presence felt because we have no other way of expressing, no other vehicles through which we can express our opposition to the kinds of things that are proposed ... "

Ms O'Shane - magistrate, Chancellor of the University of New England, candidate for the Constitutional Convention and former public servant - presented the $1000 award to Bonita Mason. By coincidence, Mason's story, "The girl in Cell 4", was also concerned with Aboriginal issues - specifically the death in custody of Janet Beetson, a young Aboriginal mother. It was published in the March/April 1997 issue of HQ Magazine.

The story took 18 months to research and was also awarded first prize in the Best Magazine Feature category in the 1997 Walkley Awards.

Following an introduction by Chris Nash, the director of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, which called for greater freedom of the press, Ms O'Shane criticised the inaccessibility of the Australian media and cited native title as one area where the public was kept misinformed about the real issues. She said that the Native Title Act currently being debated " was never intended to effect land rights for Aborigines in ... any respect whatsoever. I have some idea of what land rights legislation ought to deliver to people and I assure you that (this) native title legislation does not deliver to the people. It delivers to pastoralists ..."

"Where are we going to get access to the vehicles where we can express to the world at large, to our fellow Australians ... en masse, the ideas, the critical analysis of the issues that are confronting us ...?"

While acknowledging there has been an improvement, Ms O'Shane expressed her concern at what she described as the "dumbing down" of the media, especially the print media. "I am concerned that as of 6th March 1996 (the date of the last federal election) the ABC seemed to have dropped its standards quite remarkably ... they went into, not just shock, but I think they went into seige mode ... particularly after the likes of Howard said the ABC was biased in the manner in which it reported Aboriginal affairs. In fact, it was at that time that they had moved to some sort of balance.

"But so far as the print medium was concerned, there was never any pretence of balance in the way these kinds of issues were reported ... (but) there has been a sea change ...

Freelance journalists from around the country are invited to compete for the award which commemorates the life and work of George Munster, the late editor of Nation and Nation Review.

A committee of judges made up of freelance journalists Asa Wahlquist, senior Sydney Morning Herald journalist Graham Williams and ABC Radio business reporter Karen Snowden, chose Mason's story from a range of strong entries covering issues in areas such as politics, the environment and web technology.

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