posted on 2024-11-13, 10:58authored byP E Louw, Eric Loo
This article discerns the extent to which the presence of controversial Australian politician, Pauline Hanson, in the public sphere has been mocked and shaped by the media. Based on a textual analysis of a month's coverage of Hanson in the broadsheet metropolitan dailies, it suggests that the one-dimensionality in which Hanson was reported tells us more about Australian journalists and their practices than about Pauline Hanson herself Journalists allowed the elements of 'political correctness' to set the parameters of how they dealt with Hanson. It concludes that since journalists are the product of journalism training programs, some self-reflection on the part of journalism educators of their reaction to Hanson is called for.