Misnamed Mean Name Incorrectly Name Again
American showman P T Barnum once famously said: "I don't give a damn what you say about me as long as you spell my name right."
My name is Tahlea (or Tali) Aualiitia and every bit someone who — through unsolicited commentary — has always been told how "different" and "difficult" my name is, this quote has always resonated with me.
In fact, the last person I had to correct for the misspelling of my name was someone from my own employer, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
I was invited to bring together a TV console on representation in pop culture by ABC News earlier this calendar month. When uploading the video online, a producer misspelled my proper noun on the super (the strap with my proper name at the bottom of the screen). I wasn't aware until friends and family unit got in touch to allow me know.
Typos happen and I sympathize how a slip of the finger on the keyboard turned my surname from Aualiitia into Auakiitia.
Just while information technology was the kickoff time I had washed a TV interview, it wasn't the first time I had seen my name spelled wrong in the media.
Merely a month agone, my name was spelled incorrectly past a producer in my ain department, the Asia Pacific Newsroom.
It was pretty disappointing especially given it was a Pacific story from my own newsroom.
Now, I desire to exist articulate that in both instances my colleagues reached out and apologised and I hold no ill feelings towards them, but these small errors tin have big impacts amongst communities that ofttimes don't see themselves reflected in the media.
I'm non alone in having my name spelled wrong — my mum's Italian maiden proper noun, Boccuccia, has been misspelled on her Australian birth certificate.
Notwithstanding this is not just well-nigh the spelling of my name; I've too been told by a radio presenter I pronounce my own name incorrect, and I've heard my name laughed at on a Mamamia podcast.
I immediately emailed Mamamia, and the presenter sincerely apologised for offending me.
I'm very proud of my Samoan proper noun, and so in early June when I heard Erin Molan on 2GB radio say "hooka looka mooka hooka fooka" in a chat about the pronunciation of Pacific names, I was and then angry that I took to Twitter to call her out for her lack of cultural respect.
While Ms Molan did not reply to me, she did release a statement saying her remarks were "impuissant and inappropriate", and "an effort to reference a story that's been told multiple times on air".
I received many messages in response to my tweets — some thanked me for speaking out, some predictably called me a racist name or a snowflake, and some said that'southward what I should expect from Australian commercial media.
And then when my employer, the ABC, spelled my name incorrect when I appeared on national TV less than a week later, I knew I had to call them out in the same public mode I had called out Ms Molan.
Immediately, people started sharing their stories with me of having their ain "different" names misspelled, mispronounced or laughed at by the Australian media.
The side by side forenoon I sent an e-mail to my manager request to write this piece.
'A big target hanging around my neck'
It'due south no coincidence I'm speaking up nigh this during the latest moving ridge of the Black Lives Matter movement.
It's hard to explicate what racism feels like to someone who has never experienced information technology.
For me, it feels like walking around with a big target hanging around my cervix.
You lot don't know where the next attack — exact, physical or systemic — might come from, and lived feel ways you know it has to exercise with the colour of your skin.
And when you're on a public platform like national Tv set or social media, it feels similar that target triples in size.
Andrew Jakubowicz, an online racism expert at the University of Technology Sydney, last year told The New Daily that due to oversights in Australian law, "Australia has been for some time the all-time place in the liberal autonomous West to be an online racist."
I've seen so many guests on TV console shows like the ABC's The Pulsate and Channel 10's The Project receive racial corruption on social media when they didn't fifty-fifty talk about race on the show.
Speaking from experience, people of colour (POC) who talk about race in the media usually gear up themselves mentally for racist letters they are probable to receive on their social media accounts after their interview is circulate or published.
While I've personally received some horrible messages, it has never required police intervention, unlike what recently happened to Sudanese-Australian lawyer and human rights advocate Nyadol Nyuon.
Afterward Ms Nyuon appeared on the ABC's Q+A program recently, the S Australian police had to launch an internal investigation afterwards a staff member sent her racist and abusive messages on Facebook.
When I reached out to Ms Nyuon asking if I could include her experience in this piece, because I didn't want to expose her to more than racist trolling, she warned me to be careful in case this article drew the same negative comments she received.
Media non prepared for threats to POC staff
I work in the ABC's Asia Pacific Newsroom and a couple of months ago I asked what measures were in identify at the ABC to support POC talent later a media interview.
My manager had to seek communication from Kevin Nguyen, a digital forensics reporter at the ABC and the digital managing director of Media Multifariousness Commonwealth of australia, who said despite an increasing number of threats to POC talent and journalists — especially women and POC journalists — very few media organisations had a considered and evidence-backed proactive response to potential threats.
This is why getting our names right matters. If we're not being cared for at a base level, then what promise practice we have in tackling the bigger, more complex race problems at hand?
Despite the 2016 census showing that 49 per cent of all Australians were either born overseas or have at least ane parent born overseas, and more than 300 languages (including Indigenous languages) are spoken in Australian homes, research from Deakin Academy in 2019 establish that more than a third of Australian media articles reflected negative views of minority communities.
Information technology's widely acknowledged that cultural and linguistically diverse communities in Australia are underrepresented in the media and frequently misrepresented in the news, so the media now need to regain their trust.
There are countless times where the POC talent I've met take audibly exhaled in relief when they saw that me, a brownish adult female, was the one interviewing them.
The ABC'due south diverseness action plan already seeks to better reverberate the diversity of the Australian community — information technology includes setting goals effectually the brand-up of the ABC workforce, and increasing content that includes more than various voices (this includes gender, disability and socio-economic diversity too).
And finally, to all the people with "different" names — names that accept been laughed at, names people have refused to learn, names people rename for their own ease — correct the people who misspell them.
The right spelling of our names is non just a media result, it'south an event beyond all organisations.
Maybe take inspiration from Maori-Australian artist Kira Puru who wrote a clause in her contract stating that her appearance fee doubles if they misspell her name, after two Australian music festivals spelled her name wrong in promotion material in 2018.
We need to speak our names with the same pride nosotros speak of them when we are amid our own community.
As actress Uzoamaka Aduba's mum said: "If they can larn to say Tchaikovsky and so they can larn to say your name too."
Editor's note June 30, 2020: An earlier version of this story said Tahlea Aualiitia's proper name was misspelled on the ABC News Aqueduct. The error was fabricated on the digital video of her interview.
Posted , updated
Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-27/abc-my-employer-spelled-my-name-wrong-twice-why-it-matters/12384678
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