By Atta Ansari, Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), Oslo, Norway
27/06/2008 :: I will like to share some of the experiences from both my professional life as journalist and what I and many with me have done so far in Norway to raise awareness and to achieve a better understanding and reporting from and about minorities in Norway. When I say minorities I mean the emigrant communities from all over the world living in Norway, as in other countries in Europe.
I was born in Pakistan but I have lived almost all my life in Oslo. When someone asks me about how long have you lived in Norway – I often reply – too long. And then they will often reply; Then you are a Norwegian – yes I am – but not in the sense of my color, food I love and many other things which have been transferred to my through my upbringing and my social and cultural background. But to be honest I really don’t know how much of me is a Norwegian and how much is not. But I some time hear people underlining between the lines that all my good qualities must be Norwegian and all the bad one must be Pakistani…
So you see I am still a sociological experiment in the eyes of many social scientists, and for some of the “hippies” from 70-ies a colourful contribution to the white and cold Norwegian society.
All together I have lived in Norway for 33 years, since I was 12 years old. I have worked as journalist for about 16 years.
At a very early stage, after learning the Norwegian language and completing my high school and started to work , married and all that - I felt a need and a desire for telling the same stories to my kids which I had heard in my childhood from my parents in Pakistan. Therefore I called the local Urdu radio channel in Oslo and asked them if they could start a program for kids so they could listen to songs and stories in their mother language and be inspired by their cultural heritage. They said oh yes, this is a brilliant idea – and would you like to work for us. Because the channel was a volunteer based.
So I started to work for the local radio in Oslo – and then later for the National Channel the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation NRK since 1989. I had a break for 3 years to complete my bachelor in journalism. Since then I have been a reporter, commentator, coordinator and producer for many different news and current affairs programs – mostly I have dealt with issues within art and media both national and international for both Radio and TV and lately also writing for the web.
When I started to work as a journalist in Norway, there were only 2 / 3 non-white journalists in the whole country working for a Norwegian media company in Norwegian language. Beside that there were about 10 journalists from Pakistan, Turkey and Vietnam working for their language programs broadcasted by NRK.
But in 1995 these programs were closed or shut down after a political wave which demanded that the emigrant should learn the Norwegian language and state should not pay for the teaching of mother language in school and special services for emigrants.
There was a huge debate on this in Norway. It resulted in cuts on emigrant publications, teaching in language etc.
And at the same time my journalist union in Oslo Norsk Journalistlag and some of teachers at the journalist education at Oslo College and University started to raise questions about if media is doing a good job dealing with the minorities and reporting about them. Some asked questions like; how can we find the accurate information, people who could speak on the behalf of the communities. Journalist union asked the questions like; how can our reporting be better in the sense of cultural misunderstandings and language barriers. You might say today that the questions we asked at that time were wage and not so specific but they were the beginning of a discussion which is still going on and which have led to many different projects and specific debates on this huge topic Minorities and Media.
One project was started by my union in Oslo about 10 years ago which is still going on – it is called The Minority project of Oslo Journalist Club – I have been part of it since the beginning: Our aim has been to raise awareness among our colleagues and editors on the importance of ethical standard to avoid stigmatization of minorities. One question is if we should deal with each story as an individual case or we should all the time mention the cultural background? Many of the emigrants have been living in Norway since the beginning of seventies and their children and grand children are born in Norway. How important is their cultural background or should they not be treated as Norwegians in general?
The other thing we have done is to campaign for recruiting to journalist profession from the minorities. We have held meetings with the education institutions to make them attract youngsters from minorities to the journalist training and education. We held annual seminars on both reporting issues and to check the status on recruiting by doing counting mainly in Oslo. Some years ago we had a scholarship for journalists from a foreign country living in Norway. He or she could have six months experience in a Norwegian media company. It was financed by the journalist union, some media companies and an outsider institution Fritt Ord.
It led to 2 journalist from Vietnam and Bosnia were directly recruited to tow Norwegian newspapers and both are today in full time jobs.
Recently my institution NRK started a scholarship program for young men and women from minorities. They have a learning period of six months and after that they can start to work on freelance basis.
Most of the journalists now days are recruited to the profession through the education system or the training of 2 years after finishing the basic school of 10 years and 3 years of high school. After that you can go for a 2 years training and education in journalism. What happened about 3 years ago? The ministry of education decided a quota for minorities for the higher education. So now the journalist college must give at least 5 seats to students from the minorities.
What my unions Minority Project is doing right now is to play a role of adviser, “pusher” or a mild form of pressure group. Our other focus is on the youngsters. We promote the journalist professions at the level of 9th and 10tth class at the schools by visiting new classes every year. Schools we have chosen are on the East Side of the Oslo as most of the population of emigrants live here. We send teams of “black and white” journalist to visit the classes and to tell them about our profession and what kind of education they should choose if they want to become a journalist. We show them our TV programs, articles and debate on the role of the media – our lectures to young pupils are meant to be a contribution into the subject or topic on media they already have in school.
The debate now days among journalists in Norway is about presenting an emigrant not as an emigrant talking about minorities issue but as a professional in any field of society. Some newspapers and radio programs have a goal to present at least 1 or 2 persons with not typical Norwegian name as a “normal” person, either as a buyer or a lender or as a businessman.
Another thing I think is very important is to admire and bring into limelight the intellectual capacity of people from the minorities. This is the new debate I have started; why don’t we have visible black or Asian intellectuals and serious contemporary artists in the media? Because they do exist – we just don’t notice them.
So the result of our work and many others in Norway is that we now have about 20 journalists with the minority background working for media companies and some are also studying right now.
But the media picture of colored people is still dominated by the criminals and cheaters. We have still a long way to go. I will say that the debate is on, some work has been done, the media companies are now competing to offer jobs to those few minority journalist we have, but the progress is slow when it comes to both recruiting and reporting. Medias focus on minorities is still very stereotype as they still dominate the crime story pages.
My feeling is that there are still few media companies in Europe who put these issue on agenda by them self. They don’t do anything as long as they are not force by someone from the outside. Although the media is quite busy in criticizing the authorities for not doing enough to integrate minorities by giving them jobs in their institutions.
I believe there is not only a great need for recruiting many more to journalist profession but also to other jobs and positions in the media world. We all know that media companies in Europe are mostly “white”. You will find emigrants in cantinas and cleaning jobs, and some very famous and known presenters. There is still a big gape to fill.
I hope that we can share views on these matters and discuss how to make many more media companies to do a better job in both opening the doors for minorities as an employer and to develop guide lines for how to report on minorities. Because from my experience of many years I often hear complains that media is only promoting the negative things, reporting on crime and bad traditions and customs emigrants brought to the West.
A few of the researches and reports I have read do confirm this impartation that minorities are too often portrayed as a problem to the modern and a democratic society like Europe is.
How can we change this? I would like to hear your opinion about it.
Thank you.
Atta Ansari, Oslo, Norway