'The innocence in her beautiful green eyes': speculations on seduction and the 'feminine' in the Australian news media

Abstract

[Abstract]: It is a familiar refrain to describe journalism as, simply, story-telling (Manoff, 1986). The aim of this article, however, is to explore how that simple project turns complicated in a place like Australia, with its lingering anxieties of culture and identity (Gelder & Jacobs, 1998, p.142). This article is a start to a longer study of the specific critical and cultural implications of contemporary journalism, practised in an 'unsettled' Australian postcolonial milieu. Here, the study makes some speculative observations of gender representation in long-running news stories about two women: Schapelle Corby and Lindy Chamberlain. My disciplinary background is cultural studies, not social sciences. The result here, therefore, is not a set of conclusions drawn from content analysis, as would be the case in a different kind of paper. I also want to lend support to the discussion in journalism scholarship of the conundrum of 'objectivity' for journalistic practice in socio-political contexts where assumptions of 'objectivity' may, in fact, obscure journalism's public interest principle.