It reads like satire: a magazine prints a glossy feature of a South Sudanese-Australian model underlining attitudes towards people of colour — with photos of another African-Australian model.

But it happened recently, when Who magazine illustrated an article about Adut Akech with a photo of Flavia Lazarus.

By now, you've probably heard about the story. You might have even read the magazine's apology, or the one from the PR company who supplied the file of images.

The flurry of activity that followed the incident traced a familiar pattern: more apologies; suggestions of an "administrative" error; TV host Kerri-Anne Kennerley denying it is a race-related issue.

We moved on.

But this isn't the first time publications have misidentified people of colour in Australia.

So why does it keep happening?

'This would've not happened to a white model'

Akech was quick to point out she didn't want to lambast Who, but she did want to draw attention to something she says "would've not happened to a white model".

In the Who magazine feature, Akech spoke about changing attitudes towards refugees and people of colour. ( Instagram: Adut Akech )

"I've been called by the name of another model who happens to be of the same ethnicity, I find it very ignorant, rude and disrespectful towards both of us simply because we know that this doesn't happen with white models," she wrote in a statement on Instagram.

"I'm sure that I'm not the first person that's experienced this."

And as she promptly found out, she's not.

Another South Sudanese-Australian model, Duckie Thot, wrote in a comment: "This has happened to me too with another Australian paper ... it's really disrespectful and sad."

Adut Akech says she made the decision to speak out after repeated incidents. ( Getty: Kelly Defina )

But it's not just fashion magazines, as actress and musician Zindzi Okenyo can attest.

In March, The Sydney Morning Herald printed her image next to a brief description of one-woman play, Grounded.

Except Okenyo wasn't the actress in the play. That role belonged to another performer: Emily Havea.

Okenyo, who is a presenter on Play School, says she was "angry" but "not surprised" when she first saw the photo.

"Although I never expect anyone to know me or my work, this particular publication had featured me multiple times and on top of that, the woman they should have been featuring had just received a four-star review from that publication for her one-woman show," she tells RN.

Okenyo draws attention to misidentification in the media in 2019. ( Instagram: Okenyo )

For artists of colour who have worked hard to gain a profile in their industry, she says "it's extremely disrespectful to be merely seen as another black face with another difficult name".

"If you aren't white, many doors are still closed and it's this kind of casual racism that is a major contributing factor," she says.

"Although there are many success stories now, the road is long and tiring as you try to knock down doors whilst constantly dealing with ego and defiance."

In 2014, when The Age announced, "Waleed Aly joins The Project", it printed an image of Nazeem Hussain.

"Well, we are kinda the same person," Hussain joked on Twitter at the time.

Of course, Australian media isn't the only home to misidentification of performers, models or TV personalities from diverse backgrounds.

In February, US Vogue came under fire when it misnamed two stars of Crazy Rich Asians.

Australian comedian Ronny Chieng, who plays Eddie Cheng in the film, drew attention to a similar error from celebrity magazine, People, on social media.

"Jae W Suh is not in this photo. I'm not Randall Park. And that's Tan Kheng Hua, not Michelle Yeoh," he wrote.

This happened less than a month after US Vogue printed Muslim-American journalist and activist Noor Tagouri's image with the wrong caption. Instead, it captioned her as Pakistani actress Noor Bukhari.

"Misrepresentation and misidentification is a constant problem if you are Muslim in America," she wrote on social media.

"And as much as I work to fight this, there are moments like this where I feel defeated."

Why does it keep happening?

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There are any number of complicated factors at play — but Dr Sukhmani Khorana, cultural studies academic at the University of Wollongong, says we need to examine diversity in the media.

"Non-European people of colour are often essentialised in everyday life, as well as in realms like the arts and media. This means that they are assumed to be monocultural, one-dimensional, and devoid of individual characteristics," she says.

"Such stereotypes apply to expectations of behaviour and lifestyles, as well as phenotypes of what people look like (as opposed to the particular features of a person)."

Okenyo agrees.

"What happens when people post an article or a photo of a different non-white face than what is appropriate is that that person is essentially erased because you didn't take the time," she says.

"If you have the time to respect a person enough to feature them in your publication, extend your respects truly to that person."

The flow-on effects seem relatively straightforward: greater representation reduces the likelihood of essentialisation.

"The more variety of people of different ethnic backgrounds we see on the media, the better we are likely to get at recognising them as complex individuals with agency rather than tokens or representatives of particular cultures," Dr Khorana says.

In the UK, a Guardian investigation revealed that in 2018, there were "whole months" where "not a single BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic) person featured on the cover of our biggest-selling magazines".

We're yet to see a similar study in Australia, and without conflating fashion magazines with newsrooms, a brief glance at our journalism industry more broadly indicates it probably doesn't help that the average media employee is 27, Caucasian and male.

But Adolfo Aranjuez, freelance writer and editor of Metro magazine, points out there are no clear answers in Akech's case.

Adolfo Aranjuez says publishers need to maintain rigorous fact-checking processes. ( Supplied: Leah Jing )

"Without excusing any of the parties who made the error, I do feel it does a disservice to the complexity of such situations to make a definitive call based on speculation. But I will suggest that it is perhaps less likely to happen to a white model, insofar as numbers are stacked in their favour," he says.

"Given they comprise the majority of models in Australia, the person responsible for captioning can't merely 'rely on a race-based assumption'; they'll need to go through the likely hundreds of possible names and faces.

"That is to say: because there are many more options, the captioner has a higher likelihood of getting it wrong, which would mean they're in turn more likely to be careful to avoid such an error. This level of meticulousness should be the standard regardless of race, however."

For Aranjuez, it isn't necessarily a "wake-up call" — but an ongoing reminder of the importance of quality control in publishing.

"This isn't the first time we've had race-related nor quality-control issues in the publishing industry. If anything, I'd more readily frame this as a 'stay-awake call'. We can't sleepwalk through the work we do and let ourselves be swept up in the content churn."

He sees this as an issue endemic to the industry at large, both in print and online.

"In the mad rush to get things out into the world, publications are no longer investing in quality-control measures such as fact-checking. I wonder, for example, how many staff members even had a look at the magazine's proofs before it was sent to print?" Aranjuez says.

Emily Havea (L) and Zindzi Okenyo (R) are not, in fact, the same person. ( ABC Arts: Teresa Tan/ Supplied: Kate Williams )

For Okenyo, the "sloppiness around checking articles before they go to print" is exacerbated by ingrained bias.

"I wasn't surprised because this kind of thing happens a lot, it's part of being a non-white person in the world and it's very exhausting," she says.

"I aim to always walk through life addressing my own implicit bias — we all have them — and I try to remember, a closed mind is a wonderful thing to lose."

Whether it's examining the broader structural issues underlying misidentification of people of colour, or ensuring basic editorial standards are met in the industry — there's still a long way to go.

As Akech puts it: "Australia, you've a lot of work to do, and you've got to do better and that goes to the rest of the industry".