Ageism is still rife in Australia and represents perhaps the last socially acceptable prejudice here. The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) says the manner in which older people and issues affecting them are reported on by the media plays a big role – and they want to see change.
How we treat older people in media reports has a direct correlation with how they’re treated in real life, according to research from the AHRC. The Shaping Perceptions: How Australian Media Reports on Ageing report builds on existing knowledge about how age and ageing is represented in Australian media by “bringing media industry professionals into dialogue on why negative age portrayals persist”.
The report’s aim is to identify what needs to be done to drive positive change in age-related reporting, and hopefully to engage the industry in the Commission’s ongoing efforts to combat ageism and age discrimination in Australia.
What did they find?
The AHRC worked with external data collector RedBridge to perform a ‘content analysis’ of age-related reporting from a wide range of Australian media outlets including News Corp mastheads and TV, Nine mastheads and TV, the ABC, SBS, Guardian Australia and The Daily Aus.
After the analysis, 26 in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with journalists, presenters, editors and producers at these outlets, as well as academics in the media/communications space and senior corporate communications managers.
By and large, the researchers identified three key findings:
There is a problem with the way older people are portrayed
The research identified that there is, in fact, a problem with the way older people are negatively portrayed in Australian media. They found getting older is consistently framed as a negative and a ‘problem’ that needed to be overcome.
When older people were discussed, it was usually in terms of how frail they were, how their health was declining or the problems they supposedly cause like the housing crisis and other intergenerational conflicts.
Australian media simply reflects wider anti-ageing attitudes
The research showed media representations mostly reflect a broader mainstream culture in Australia that undervalues older people. Many of the media professionals interviewed also reported that issues affecting older people are often regarded as ‘lesser’ than those affecting other groups such as women, people with disability and younger people.
There are specific drivers for ageism in media
The research identified specific drivers in the media landscape that contribute to bias and negativity in age reporting. This includes a lack of access to age-related subject matter experts, time and resource constraints, the loss of experienced and specialist practitioners in newsrooms and a lack of consensus among academics on ageing matters.
How do we fix it?
The AHRC says that focusing on these three key areas is the most likely to deliver real change in how older people are reported on.
They say addressing the expert gap is imperative and improving media access to relevant spokespersons and subject-matter experts should be a priority.
Education and training around age-related issues needs to be improved by designing and providing resources and staff training to increase industry awareness about ageism and strengthening editorial standards in reporting on age-related matters.
Finally, the AHRC wants to shift the narrative on ageing by collectively embarking on a communications campaign to combat ageism within the media industry and in the wider community.
It may take a while, but the AHRC is confident these changes would lead to an improvement in how older people are portrayed in the media and hopefully an improvement in how they are treated by wider society.
Do you think media in Australia is ageist? Are older people discriminated on more than other groups? Let us know in the comments section below.
Also read: How you can stay engaged and happy at work later in life
