Can the Matildas medal after a stellar 2023 World Cup campaign or Ariarne Titmus beat her own world record at the Paris Olympics? Just two of the many topics of discussion in Australia’s media.

Pity that mentions of First Nations athletes set for the Paris Games have been few and far between.

Despite pivotal past performances by the likes of Cathy Freeman in 2000 in the 400m, and more recently Patty Mills captaining the Australian Boomers to their first medal in Toyko, media attention on First Nations Olympians has been minimal. 

Of the 460 athletes headed to Paris for the XXXIII Olympiad, 10 identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander: Taliqua Clancy (beach volleyball), Calab Law (athletics), Callum Peters (boxing), Marissa Williamson Pohlmann (boxing), Maurice Longbottom (rugby 7s), Mariah Williams (hockey), Brooke Peris (hockey), Patty Mills (basketball), Conor Nicolas (sailing) and Abbey Connor (swimming).

Former broadcaster for ABC and NITV and Gurindji Woolwonga woman Susan Moylan Coombs said sport continued to encourage greater representation of First Nations people, but sports media too often focused on social or cultural angles and needed to do more to recognise athletes abilities.

“There’s good stuff that’s happening,” she told Central News. “And then there’s the continued highlight of really awful stuff that’s happening. But when the bad stuff happens, it’s interesting that there’s much more support than, say, 30 years ago. 

“This system needs listens to us. It is constantly putting a Band-Aid on the wound that is never allowed to heal.”

She said sports media continued to view First Nations peoples as political footballs, focusing on social issues rather than their athletic abilities. 

Moylan Coombs pointed to Cathy Freeman as en example, after she suffered extreme backlash for carrying the Australian and Aboriginal flag side-by-side in 2002, or more recently Adam Goodes’ treatment when a Collingwood supporter called him a racist slur. 

“What does race have to do with it? They’re a good swimmer, or they’re a good runner,” she said. “And so, everything’s all, the ‘first Aboriginal persons to do this’, or ‘the first pair of Strait Islanders to go across to the United States and play in the NBA’.

 “I believe there are other ways of telling stories, and they don’t have to always be through the lens of race. If they go in not wanting to understand the truth of a situation, they’re just going to regurgitate the same information. And that’s what we don’t need.”

She said media outlets had a tendency to over-saturate or dramatise situations, and that it needed to adopt a responsible truth-telling approach. Reporting of ‘surface-level’ stories, she added, was improving in some parts of the media.  

By integrating First Nations journalists’ voices, such as Channel Nine’s Brooke Boney or the ABC’s Tony Armstrong, she said athletes are becoming better accepted by the media as the media itself is diversifying. 

“You’ve got a lot of sports players who are starting to become real personalities, and there is a movement towards making things much more representative,” she said. 

“So in terms of our representation in the media, particularly in broadcast media, it has gotten much better. And because of that, it pushed the commercials to do better.

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Susan Moylan Coombs. Image supplied.

 “And the more that people who have entered into this playing field, the more that it has brought a whole lot of the discrimination and racism to the surface.”

However, having controversial moments such as Nicky Winmar raising his shirt or Freeman’s Aboriginal flag recognition, catalyses conversations that foster better representation of Indigenous peoples. 

Moylan Coombs said when she was growing up, there weren’t any First Nations representatives to idolise. 

The media tends to represent athletes as heroes, and today she said depiction of First Nations athletes as leaders allowed First Nations people to see a “way up.”

“[When players like Latrell Mitchell] start to take a leadership role, it does something for the greater good of communities,” she added. 

“People start to see that they have some power to create change. That makes a difference for young children in communities, as they show successful people.

“When they see someone like Patty Mills, they see someone who still values their identity. That will keep them balanced and strong in the long run.”

The Paris Olympics 2024 begins on July 24, with the opening ceremony on the 27th.

Main Image created with GenCraft.