The first workshop of the day started with a clip of the American comedian Dan Nainan’s show. Nainan is of Japanese and Indian descent and shares his observations of moving within the three different cultural circles and anecdotes of them clashing. Afterwards, workshop leaders Daniela Milutin (Neue Deutsche Medienmacher) and Mekonnen Mesghena (Böll-Foundation) introduced the objectives of the workshop: Do migrants prove to be an enrichment to mainstream media? And how can it be achieved that more migrants actively participate in media-making? The discussion was initiated by the participants portraying and evaluating the situation in their home countries. It became clear that, especially in Eastern European countries, there are substantial shortcomings regarding the representation of migrants in the media, but there are a lot of differentiations: In some countries, such as Poland and Bulgaria the situation is similar to Germany’s in that migrants are underrepresented as media producers in comparison to their share of the general population. In others like Belarus or the Ukraine however, migrants and their problems don’t even feature in media coverage. 21-year-old Ukrainian Maryna noted: “Despite seeing migrants on the streets we don’t know a thing about them. I think it’s important that reports on migrants increase in order for them not to be completely alienated from society any longer.”
Whilst it can generally be said that migrants feature more numerously and actively in most Western European media, the situation is still far from ideal.
Yannick from Belgium reports for example, that in his country there are a lot more journalists with migration background working in the tele-visual industries than in print media, which has obvious effects on media participation. Patricia from London said that the problem in the UK was “affirmative action” whereby some journalists get preferential treatment owing to their migrant descent rather than their qualification. But when looking at the example of Germany, where people with immigrant roots, make up some 20 per cent of the population but only one per cent of media professionals, one is left wondering whether a bit of affirmative action is necessary, at least to initiate a change.
So, what actually defines a qualified journalist in a multicultural society anyway? The second hour of the workshop was dedicated to this question. After a lively discussion the ideal journalist and media-maker was crafted. Multilingual, experience abroad and have an extensive knowledge of other cultures and religions. And regardless of the individual journalists’ background it is important that the departmental environment they work in reflects the society they report about in its composition.