Thread: My first career. This has taken me a long time to get over because I still carry trauma and feel sick about it. Colleagues have been sharing their story and I’m adding my voice. We need to change the system.

I won out a journalist cadetship for SBS. I only mention SBS because it’s touted as a champion of diverse voices. It wasn’t a champion for me. I still believe in SBS’ charter & mission, and personally think they have the best content in Oz. A lot of good people in the newsroom

I started out as a pretty solid journalist. I could string a story together pretty quickly. Sure I was always introduced as “the Indigenous cadet journalist” while the others were just “the cadet journalists” but this was my dream job. I’ll put up with the othering.

But by the end of 2 yrs: my writing was worse, my self-esteem destroyed, I had suicidal thoughts. The stress on my body meant I developed eczema, I lost my period for 4 months, I stopped eating; a piece of toast filled me for the day because of anxiety. THIS IS WHAT RACISM DOES.

It was mainly one person (non-Indigenous) in particular that really treated me badly. They started out as really friendly but then came the micro-aggressions, forms of paternalism and racism. It wasn’t just me; it was my Aboriginal colleagues that suffered as well.

My Aboriginal colleagues and I were sent an email to improve our grammar. We were told to do this course for school students. We felt dumb straight away. I was the newest to the team, but the other Aboriginal journalists had been there for years - they were confused. Why just us?

We’d (the Aboriginal journalists) then had to suffer the humiliation of sitting next to the person like a school child and going through our story line by line, told why it was bad writing and why the script wasn’t good enough. Everything had to be re-written.

I wanted to include a piece of classical music to a story on a cooking school, I was told it was Indigenous enough – go with the didgeridoos. Do you know how demeaning that is being told that by a non-Indigenous person?

I’d end up in tears after a voice over session. They said I sounded too country WA, I pronounced Aunty as a blackfella would “Aun-ee” (even though this was a blackfella news program mind you). Had to hit those t's. Made to do it over and over and over again.

I understand that this was a national broadcaster and I had to speak in the formal English way but what should have been a 10-minute session in the voice over box, would turn into two hours and I’d come out defeated, ashamed of the way I spoke.

I remember a veteran Aboriginal journalist was made to go reshoot an interview on a light story (about a flower shop) because it wasn’t hard hitting enough. My colleague got up from his desk and left the building, broken. I'll never forget the look on their face. Humiliating.

One of the best journos in our team offered to go work in other divisions over holiday breaks when news division was crying out for staff. They were denied. Yet the emails kept coming asking for people to volunteer.

I know it was because news bosses were told we were not up to standard. We felt like the dopey blackfellas in the corner, ticking boxes. My colleague would continually pitch to Dateline - again denied. The story pitches were good. They ended up giving them to the white journos.

And then Walkley season would happen. I overheard a conversation between two of the higher-ups and how they would enter the non-Indigenous journos into awards but not the Indigenous journos. We just “didn’t have the chops.”

Awards were given out to white journos telling our stories. We had a running joke about the way non-Indigenous journos would do a stint at our program and leave with a Walkley.

Being an Indigenous journalist is hard.We often used our family name to gain access and trust to communities.But I swear most of the work we did was building bridges because of an offensive encounter communities had with non-Indigenous journalists.Fixing this shit was exhausting.

Back to the office. Continual micro-aggressive-racist comments (only way I can describe them). I was told I was one of the good ones. Comments were made about my looks; apparently I looked more Aboriginal on certain days. There were jokes made about alcohol. I was shame.

I started to get short with this person making the comments and straight away I was pulled aside and told I had an attitude problem. I felt so alone and unsupported that I put up a facebook status. It was something like: “I faced racism today but I survived. I always do.”

Well I was called in the boss’s office and told to take it down, even though I didn’t mention any names or that it was at work. I think I did say something on twitter that could identify the person; I was dobbed in and reprimanded.

No one cared about the racism we received. It was more about protecting that person and the company.

For years I felt guilt about writing that status but I look back now and realise I wasn’t at fault. What do you expect a young journalist who has moved to the other side of the country to do when they are not getting support from the employer?

I’m told that me writing that status is now an example in their induction program of what not to do. Least I have some legacy.

My colleagues and I were made to feel dumb and all of our confidence had gone. The program suffered. We were all at rock bottom. I had enough. I complained to a higher up. My Aboriginal colleagues thanked me for doing so. We thought it would all be sorted & would be safe again.

But nothing was done. And that’s when shit really hit the fan. The person did the classic white fragility thing and made themselves the victim; us Aboriginal journalists were the ones being horrible to the non-Indigenous staff. They threatened to sue me.

The solution? I wasn’t allowed to work directly with that person. Instead my stories had to go through someone else. But I still sat a metre away from the person, and would receive passive aggressive emails everyday. (Making a new thread)