Breaking news — a drama about an Australian female newsreader is making headlines in Britain. The Newsreader is a nuanced but honest reflection of the racism, homophobia and sexism prevalent in television during the 1980s.
The series stars Anna Torv as Helen Norville, a star newsreader with a big bouffant who constantly battles male bosses to have her journalistic skills taken seriously. To me The Newsreader isn’t a drama but a documentary. This is because I worked as a reporter on an Australian prime-time current affairs show in the 1980s. The shoulder pads, the high-rise hair, the perms (I looked as though I’d sutured my pubic hair to my cranium) and most of all, the relentless sexism all rings painfully true. Females working in this