Ethnic media are essential for new migrants and should be better funded
Ethnic media are not just essential for the media landscape itself, but to facilitate successful migrant settlement, explains John Budarick in this crossposting from The Conversation.
The fact that the community ethnic and multicultural broadcasting sector didn’t receive additional funding in the latest budget reflects a misunderstanding of the important role of ethnic media in Australian society.
Ethnic print and broadcasting have a long history in Australia, dating back to at least 1848 with the publication of Die Deutsche Post.
An annual indexation freeze in funding introduced by the Liberal government in 2013 has cost the sector almost A$1 million.
Early foreign language broadcasting featured on commercial radio in the 1930s, and throughout the middle of the 20th century. This was before the boom days of the 1970s, when both the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) and community radio were firmly established.
I disagree wholeheartedly.
I understand what ethnic media are like being from a minority group myself.
Most of the content is not original, but rather illegally translated content from other publishers, used without their permission, let alone attribution. Why should I, a taxpayer, fund that?
On topic of Gov comms, the slick looking English material suddenly looks like it’s been typed up in Comic Sans or Times New Roman when translated.
Most of the SBS content is too amateurish, or just too old school.
The translators that governments use are of abhorrent quality, let alone some of the brands that I see..
Now if their was a grant for original content or for innovation in this sector that might be a different story.