“There Is Shame and Pride, It’s Not Neutral”: Community Division and Commonalities in Mediatised Public Crisis

This paper examines how the Malka Leifer child sexual abuse crisis, mediatised across Australian mainstream, local and social media, impacted the Australian Jewish community. Guided by framing theory, this study uses mixed methods: a news framing analysis of ABC, The Age, the Herald Sun and the Australian Jewish News across four critical discourse moments, and “peer conversation” focus groups across Jewish denominations. Findings reveal that, despite news media’s intentions, coverage consistently adopted an “otherness” frame when reporting Jewish community issues. Such simplified and limited approaches to news framing contrast with the multi-faceted nature of the ethnoreligious Jewish identity, exacerbating vulnerability in a community already navigating the legacies of the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and triggering responses ranging from engagement to unjustified notions of shame. The article argues that more reflexive reporting practices are needed to recognise the community’s multidimensional identities and mitigate harm in future public crises.