Will minority students be part of the future of Canadian Media?
Involvement and media (mis)representation
TOPE ORIOLA STAFF
PHOTO: TOPE ORIOLA
Will minorities be part of the future of Canadian mass media? If the degree of diversity at the 69th annual Canadian University Press (CUP) national conference that I attended last week, tagged “SAGA 2007” in Vancouver is a parameter of the potential crème-dela- crème of the mass media in Canada, then I’m afraid not.
From a participant observational perspective and with a very liberal estimation, there couldn’t have been more than two aboriginal persons, six of African descent including myself and certainly less than 10 persons of Asian descent. In other words, the number of those Statistics Canada designates as “visible minorities” couldn’t have been up to 20 out of over 300 delegates! I wonder how many visible minorities there are in the over 1,500-member Canadian Association of Journalists. What might be responsible?
Chances are that discrimination could be said to be a factor in the wider society, a fact I pointed out in a previous article. However, I must be honest enough to admit that from my experience at the Manitoban, it is a Herculean task getting students, particularly minority students involved in their own students’ newspaper. If they do not get involved from school and later decide to go into journalism, perhaps after attending journalism school, will they be able to match the priceless experience of those who had been involved from school and happen to be in the dominant ethnic groups?
Nothing could be hyperbolic about the significance of participation in the media. It enables participants to have a voice and define the issues to be taken as crucial and thus worthy of being reported. Representation is very fundamental. Those who do not control the media are those who get ridiculed in the media. Everyone from
Those who do not control the media are those who get ridiculed in the media. Everyone from the Middle-East and Africa knows that by now.
the Middle-East and Africa knows that by now.When the Manitoban published the article “HIV: The new face of Africa” (March 8, 2006), I felt sufficiently angry to write a rebuttal and correct the distortion and exaggeration of facts presented. That spurred me to get involved with the Manitoban. Happily, the writer continues to volunteer for the Manitoban and I have not seen any articles making unsubstantiated arguments about Africa since joining the team. I would definitely scrutinize, but not impede any article about Africa. Is that politics? You bet it is! That’s the way the world is configured.
However, we need not be reactionary or wait for someone to erroneously address an issue and rush to write a rebuttal. We must get involved and thus set the agenda. I know comment articles feel like another major term paper, but after nearly nine months as comment editor, minority students have written at best six articles in the Manitoban. Considering that we publish weekly in the regular session, this is a dismal record.
We should not be surprised then that most people, even those supposedly “enlightened” simply assume everyone from the Middle East is a terrorist, at least potentially, and that Africans must be from primitive societies where they dwell with wild animals and live on trees. Without being involved, how do we let the world know the true story? No wonder, in the mainstream North American media, countries like Canada and the U.S. are “wealthy” countries. No one mentions the poor people in Fifth- World neighbourhoods and the debtridden middle-class. Media is makebelieve — for the greater part. From an ethnomethodological perspective, reality itself is unreal and nothing is ever fully knowable. What we think we know about the world around us is what has been brought to limelight and defined in the prism of the media.
Under-representation of minorities is also a fundamental problem in virtually all fields of human endeavour. However, we must not simply assume that there is a “marble ceiling” (a-la Nancy Pelosi) or that we would be discriminated against. The world, as they say, gives way to those who know where they are going. I must state though that it would not come easy.
Undoubtedly, the future of Canadian media is secure, but minorities must be prepared to accept a distorted image of themselves if they don’t get involved from the roots; an opportunity offered by campus newspapers. That would not be discrimination, but sheer selfdefeatism.
Tope Oriola is comment editor of the Manitoban and a graduate student in sociology.
