Why SBS still matters

SBS managing director Shaun Brown argues that despite the growth of online access to overseas news, the need for the broadcaster remains.

At its best the media can play an empowering role helping to foster social cohesiveness – it acts as a mirror, a mentor and a mediator.  

At its worst it can create divisions, exacerbate tensions and encourage a tribal view of society.

A small example – should SBS be proud that it first exposed the issue of attacks on Indian students and then provided on-going coverage of developments, including a full scale Insight televised debate?

Well, I obviously think so. But I’m sure there are those who might believe this served only to trigger a media feeding frenzy, both here and in India, that destablised relations between Australia and India and created an atmosphere of vulnerability and distrust among the Indian community here.

Of course, SBS is not responsible for how other media covers such issues, and the real test for me is that if similar circumstances arose again would SBS take such a front-foot approach? The answer has to be yes.

Presenting a true picture of the Australian community is at the heart of what SBS does. We are passionate about portraying the cultural realities of Australia whether it is through our commissioned and acquired content or through our news and current affairs coverage. We do this on television, on radio and online.

Before I go further with this, let me be abundantly clear that SBS needs to do more – needs to have a bigger voice in the noisy media landscape. We are discussion with Government how we achieve that.

Reflecting diversity is our raison d’être, our reason for existing and how we measure and benchmark our success as a public broadcaster. In 2010 we celebrate 30 years of SBS Television and 35 years of SBS Radio. In the online space we have been extending our content offering for around a decade now.

It also demonstrates the foresight of successive Governments which have understood that multiculturalism will not succeed by good will alone. It requires an active policy agenda to support it. What was most interesting about the decision to establish SBS was the insight that the policy agenda had to be bigger than traditional government welfare based program models. Media was used to inform and educate but also, critically, to entertain – to engage the imagination and bring people on a journey by sharing the stories of Australia’s cultural diversity.

Former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser said SBS was created not only to help new arrivals interpret Australia but also to help other Australians learn about the history and culture of people who had recently made Australia their home. It was always a two-way relationship, he said.

SBS continues to balance its responsibility to meet the diverse communications needs of Australia’s multicultural community while informing, educating and entertaining all Australians.

It is a balancing act. We have a vast remit articulated in our Charter and limited resources with which to deliver it. There is often the misguided (but I would say well meaning) view that we must try to deliver all things, to all people, all of the time, in all languages without diminishing the distinctiveness of what we do.

It is an impossible task. Instead, SBS in delivering its Charter, focuses on core activities which can meet the communication needs of Australia’s multicultural communities while opening a window on the world for all Australians, from all backgrounds to enjoy.

Over the past few years we have made a conscious commitment and investment in telling more Australian stories that reflect the cultural reality of the Australian community. Our award winning dramas The Circuit and East West 101 alongside our landmark documentary series First Australians are standout examples of this commitment.

We give a voice to different sectors of the community in our national debates and we enable different voices and different languages and cultures, to be reflected back to all Australians.

But many argue that there is no longer a need for a ‘special’ broadcasting service. That technology has opened up so many avenues for people to source information, in-language, from overseas, that SBS’s in-language services have become redundant.

Quite the opposite is true. While choice may well be unlimited, where is the news and information about living and participating in Australia coming from? Who is telling the local stories in-language, talking about the issues affecting CALD (culturally and linguistically diverse) communities here? Where do people go to learn more about Australia and what services are available to them?

Broadband and digital technologies have fundamentally transformed the way in which we access information. Both the number of sources and the pace of information flow have vastly increased. And the choice is only going to get greater.

Already the Government is considering how best to deploy the spectrum that will be freed up when Australia shifts to digital television and the free to air broadcasters – including SBS and the ABC – are planning the expansion of our services over the next five to ten years.

At the click of a mouse you can access up to the minute news from a variety of online sources and satellite television means you can keep up with televised news from your homeland at the touch of a button.

The paradox of all of this choice for CALD communities and recent arrivals in particular is that it gives people the excuse to retreat – to circle the wagons, particularly in times of racial and community tension.

SBS was created as a means for the Government to engage with CALD communities – to ensure they had a link to information about their life in Australia. It is vitally important that CALD communities today can engage with local issues, in-language; rather than solely engaging with news and views from overseas sources.

If we seriously think the need for a multicultural and multilingual public broadcaster in Australia is diminished then we risk further marginalising the more than three million Australians who speak a language other then English at home.

We risk opening up digital ghettos – where despite the plethora of choice that digital and broadband technologies can bring, an Australian perspective on the world is denied to CALD communities.

To help inform our decisions about future services, I have been conducting community consultations with some major language communities across Australia. We have backed this up with targeted research into several communities – including the Indian community in Sydney and Melbourne – to gauge their perceptions of the Australian community and the media in this country.

Significantly, participants reported that around 80 per cent of their media consumption is from overseas with satellite television services prominent and growing. Having access to satellite was identified as a major aspiration for the Indian community.

Reflect on that for a moment. Our research reinforced the view that if the only source of information about what is happening in Australia about a certain cultural community is from overseas; the opportunity for misinformation is very high. So statements by the Australian Government or other Australian commentators on attacks on Indian students were being received by Indian Australians only through the filter of Indian media. In some cases such comment or information was removed by that filter.

Indian newspapers are prominent on the web and Indian news and entertainment can be easily downloaded.

The upshot is that Indian communities do not need to engage with Australian media because they have access to many other sources of information. Furthermore, the fact that they lack respect or trust for most Australian media outlets means that they are disinclined to rely on them any way.

SBS was created in the 1970s to ensure that new arrivals to Australia could access, in-language, important information about Government services – health services in particular. Over time our remit has grown and we are now the most diverse broadcaster in the world, broadcasting in 68 languages on radio and more than 47 languages representing 136 cultures on television.

There is a very real need for SBS’s services to not only continue, but to grow. We need to harness the potential of new technologies to expand and deepen our range of services and to engage culturally and linguistically diverse communities in Australia, including second and third generation children of migrants.

We know that we significantly under-serve major or growing language communities while at the same time doing little or nothing for new, high need language groups. And, we continue to largely serve our language communities on analogue radio when our audiences are increasingly turning to online services to meet their communications needs.

This is clearly unacceptable and untenable for a modern media organisation with a remit like SBS’s. As migration increases SBS’s role in supporting settlement and engagement with Australia’s democratic institutions through multilingual and culturally relevant communications will be more critical than ever. We are constantly seeking ways to improve our service delivery and we are in regular dialogue with Government about the need to be adequately resourced.

The LOTE (languages other than English) community in Australia will continue to grow with Asian and Arabic languages identified as the fastest growing. English proficiency amongst LOTE speakers is high and many self identify as speaking English well or very well. This is likely to increase as the skilled migration intake increases. But these people and many second generation Australians, have a legitimate desire to maintain cultural links and linguistic skills.

After all, for the last 35 years SBS has existed to provide a connection to Australia for all Australians, wherever they are from. I look forward to ensuring we continue to do that for another 35 years.

• This is an edited version of an address given by Shaun Brown at Murdoch University