Researchers couldn’t identify a single Indigenous person on air at Seven, and it’s the only network that hasn’t diversified its breakfast show, which continues to be 100 per cent white.

Of course, it’s not just who is on our screens that matters. When we analysed network board directors and television news leaders, the root of the problem becomes clearer. The ABC board includes not a single First Nations or non-European leader. The boards of Nine Entertainment and SevenWest Media each have just one face of non-European background. While SBS has representation on its board, there are big diversity gaps in its TV news leadership. Ditto for Nine and Seven, where gender representation is also a problem. Those calling the shots and framing the narrative don’t look or sound like the Aussie audience.

My ancestry is non-European. We make up a quarter of Australia’s population, yet on commercial television we get around 1.3 per cent screen time. This means our population is 19 times greater than the number of us telling our stories on those networks.

Why does it matter? Why are we counting this? Forget diversity and representation being the right thing to do; it’s the commercially smart thing to do because you need to appeal to audiences. Our research also gauged audience attitudes and news consumption patterns. Non-Europeans had the least trust in news and were the most likely to switch off.

When trust is lacking, the impacts can be dire. Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show Australians born in North Africa and the Middle East are 10 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than those born in Australia. From unfair lockdowns imposed on local government areas “of concern”, to parts of the media not fully interrogating why our most multicultural suburbs were over-policed and demonised despite the chief health officer advising against it, I witnessed members of my Middle Eastern community become increasingly hostile towards mainstream media. They then became more vaccine-hesitant and had a greater propensity to turn to dubious sources of information online.

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While the report measures the scale of the problem, crucially it provides many solutions based on international best practice. As a priority, the Australian Communications and Media Authority should look to its British counterpart, Ofcam, which annually collects data from TV and radio broadcasters on the make-up of their workforces. These metrics are publicly available and, crucially, also measure age, disability, sexuality and socio-economic background.

Measuring the scale of the problem not only increases accountability but is a way to track and acknowledge progress. Meaningful change takes time, but let’s start by doing more than offering vague platitudes and non-measurable pledges to do better.

Antoinette Lattouf is a broadcaster, columnist and author.

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