The players
Yumi Stynes: A radio host on Sydney’s KIIS FM, and the presenter of the ABC podcast Ladies, We Need To Talk. Stynes’ mother is Japanese, which makes her a rarity on snow-white Australian television.
Kerri-Anne Kennerley: A fixture on Australian screens since 1967, and Logie Hall of Fame inductee. The host of innumerable morning shows. Once taught Peter Costello how to dance the Macarena.
Studio Ten: The fifth most-popular morning show on TV, behind Mel and Kochie, the new Today lineup, Virginia Trioli and Michael Rowland on ABC News Breakfast, and a blank screen. AKA: where Joe Hildebrand has gone to die.
The battle
During a Monday-morning debate about the Invasion Day marches that took place around the country on 26 January, Kennerley characterised the protesters as follows:
“Has any single one of those 5,000 people waving the flags, saying how inappropriate the day is – has any one of them been out to the outback where children, babies, five-year-olds are being raped? Their mothers are being raped, their sisters are being raped, they get no education. What have you done? Zippo.”
Stynes responded by saying “That is not even faintly true, Kerri-Anne, and you’re sounding quite racist now.”
The audience made its allegiances known at this point, mainly by making “AUUUUUW” noises.
“I’m offended by that, Yumi,” Kennerley replied. “Just because I have a point of view, Yumi, doesn’t mean that I’m racist.”
The battleground
When Kennerley talked about “children, babies, five-year-olds … being raped” in “the outback”, she may have been referring to the rape of a two-year-old girl in Tennant Creek last year. Kennerley has previously expressed hostility to the idea of changing Australia Day, saying in September she was “sick of being embarrassed of being a white Australian who lives here”.
Conservative media and politicians have sporadically seized on the issue of child rape in the past to justify greater interference in remote Indigenous communities, most notably the Northern Territory Intervention in 2007. While family violence is a serious issue, the questionable portrayal of Aboriginal men in these communities as child molesters and rapists has had a devastating impact.
As for Kerri-Anne’s assertion that Invasion Day protesters are indifferent to Indigenous welfare, organisers and speakers at Invasion Day rallies around the country included Aboriginal-led activist groups Grandmothers Against Removals, Fighting In Solidarity Towards Treaties and Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance; Dunghutti woman Leetona Dungay, the mother of David Dungay Jr, who died in Long Bay Jail in 2015; and Wurundjeri elder Aunty Di Kerr.
I'm sick of going to the outback and bumping into Kerry Anne Kennelly.
— MattNT (@MattNT11) January 29, 2019
The original clip on Studio 10’s Facebook page has been watched 114,000 times, and more than 460,000 times on Twitter. A follow-up segment featuring the former Victorian Greens MP and Gunnai-Gunditjmara woman Lidia Thorpe and Alice Springs councillor and Warlpiri woman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has garnered 136,000 views. Most of Studio 10’s Facebook clips get between 3,000 and 10,000 views.
A former Country Liberal Party politician, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is a controversial figure for many Aboriginal people for her stances on some issues, such as supporting Australia Day and the Northern Territory Intervention. (Marcia Langton has described Price as having “very public contempt for her own culture”, and detailed Price’s affiliations with alt-right figures such as Mark Latham.)
Price accused Thorpe of being “privileged” because she “[has] an education”, and has hit out at “snowflakes” who have never “set foot in a town camp or remote community”.
The trenches
Many of the headlines reporting on the original clip, including the Guardian, have been criticised for framing the issue as Kennerley being called “racist,” rather than around the substance of what she said.
I find it really telling that the headline out of the KAK v Yumi argument on #Studio10 is that someone dared call KAK a racist, not the content of her inflammatory comments, for which she provided no citations. pic.twitter.com/F30FxoB8oe
— beverley wang (@beverleywang) January 29, 2019
Going off headlines on Wednesday, the ABC has moved on, and Nine newspapers have confined themselves to a piece about the protest outside Channel 10 HQ in Pyrmont on Tuesday.
But News Corp has seized this story in its jaws and won’t let go: it’s taking up the majority of page 1, 7 and 13 of the Daily Telegraph, with a banner on page 1 of the Australian, and most of page 3.
Besides turning the debate into yet another call for a Crusade against POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD (see the Australian’s “SHE’S NOT RACIST” banner on the front page), the Murdoch press has used the story as part of its ongoing promotion of rightwing Aboriginal public figures like Price.
On Wednesday, Price has an op-ed in the Australian, which is also leading with a story of Price’s Facebook account being suspended for posting some of the abuse she received in the debate’s aftermath. News Corp also has several splashes featuring Indigenous leaders who just so happen to agree with them, such as Warren Mundine and the Indigenous health minister Ken Wyatt, who weigh in on Price’s side.
While many traditional media outlets sided with Kennerley, social media was more divided. Stynes was lauded by several prominent Aboriginal people and people of colour.
Be like Yumi. @yumichild
— Senator Briggs (@Briggs) January 28, 2019
Pedestrian, Nine’s portal for The Youth, described Kennerley’s comments as racist and argued that “Australia should be banned from breakfast TV until we can use it responsibly”.
In a rare move, many outlets actually asked Aboriginal people to weigh in. On News.com.au, former international figure skater and Gamilaroi woman Lowanna Gibson took Kennerley to task, while 10 Daily pinged the National NAIDOC Committee member and Yawuru woman Shannan Dodson to ask why calling something “racist” is more offensive in Australian public debate than saying something racist.
For Junkee, Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts wrote about the impact stereotypes shared on primetime can have on Indigenous Australia. Aboriginal-owned media outlet IndigenousX, meanwhile, turned News Corp’s “Aboriginal leaders” line on its head.
White leaders condemn Kerri-Anne Kennerley over racism row #IndigenousX https://t.co/mNAVSOZHeD #KAK
— IndigenousX Pty Ltd (@IndigenousXLtd) January 30, 2019
The aftermath
How Stynes’ career will be affected is yet to be seen, but in a post on industry site TV Blackbox, the media executive Rob McKnight said he had “always had a bad feeling about a personality like Yumi’s being on morning television”. Kennerley described Stynes’ decision to cancel a follow-up appearance on Studio 10 as “seriously unprofessional”. If the examples of Yassmin Abdel-Magied and Duncan Storrar are any guide, expect the Australian to assign several junior reporters to follow Stynes’ every move for at least the next three years.
Stynes herself has not been silent in the face of criticism. On KIIS’s 3pm Pick-Up on Tuesday, she claimed Kennerley “muttered” that “Indigenous people just need to get over it, instead of protesting Australia Day”, and that appearing on Studio 10 again “would’ve been walking into a trap”.
Despite the protest outside Channel 10’s offices, Kennerley’s status in the industry is seemingly impregnable. In Stynes’ words, Kennerley is “like a cockroach; she can’t be extinguished”.
As is now standard for women in Australian media, both Stynes and Price have been the targets of online abuse, including death threats in Stynes’ case. Photographers have also been camped outside Stynes’ house. “If you see a photo of me in this exact outfit in the press tomorrow, it was taken without my permission in an intimidating way while I was alone with my three-year-old son,” she wrote on Twitter. “This is how they silence us.”
Some creep photographer was waiting outside my house at 4:40pm today. If you see a photo of me in this exact outfit in the press tomorrow it was taken without my permission in an intimidating way while I was alone with my 3-yo son. THIS IS HOW THEY SILENCE US#creeps pic.twitter.com/u6R4GkFQuj
— Yumi Stynes (@yumichild) January 30, 2019
