Ethnic Radio

Ethnic Media - Disseminating News to CALD Communities during Pandemic

Since COVID-19 was first confirmed in Australia in late January 2020 the MCCSA has through various media platforms kept South Australia’s Culturally and Linguistically diverse communities regularly updated about the virus. Social distancing and lockdown measures meant our CALD communities faced with language barriers will have to rely on information via ethnic news outlets and social media to keep abreast with what’s going on around them. 5EBI Radio Adelaide was one news outlet which was able to reach out to many in our CALD communities during those trying times. For this edition of community voices we had the opportunity of speaking with Kym Green the Manager of 5EBI to glean an insight on how they fared on with their service during and after the lockdown. Reflecting on his career Kym said he has spent his entire working life in the media spanning 4 decades working in television and radio broadcasting. But his passion was working with communities. “Community radio was the passion and the ethnic radio became a big part of that” said Kym Asked to describe his workplace Kym said 5EBI is a family which is made up of 43 different ethnic communities. “Basically what 5EBI does is, it gives each of those 43 those communities a voice, so within the market place they have the comfort in knowing they can inform, update and promote their communities in South Australia” For an air time of $8 per hour communities are given the opportunity to share information with their members using their local dialects which they can understand and relate to. As the migration landscape changes so does the diversity in the groups that uses the radio station for broadcasting. Recent newcomers to the station

are the Tanzanian and Montenegro community. Just like most of us, the sudden impact of COVID-19 took us all unawares. Kym said the station has been going for forty five years and it has many broadcasters and producers who have been there for forty five years. “So the biggest impact on the station when the Covid virus hit has been that as many of our broadcasters are in their seventies they sort of said ‘look Kym we don’t think we can come in until this dies down’ They felt very vulnerable working in what they considered a risky area and worried about catching the virus. “We lost in a space of a week half of our volunteers; however we kept in touch with them on a weekly basis to see how they were going”. But that’s not all Kym said. Loss of the volunteers also meant loss of some programs as well. “They have had to record from home. We had to close the radio station and people had to leave their material in a box. We lost about nine programs so instead of starting at six in the morning and finishing at midnight we were starting at nine in the morning and finishing at ten”. In those crucial days of the epidemic the 5EBI played a vital role providing much needed COVID 19 information updates from SA Health and the Australian government to our CALD communities. According to Kym, the ethnic broadcasters were very supportive. “If we said we need that translated as soon as possible they would do it straightaway, their support has been fantastic as they recognised the problem”. It was also not just about providing information but also responding to queries from older listeners. “Particularly those who are on their own, 5EBI was their only friend so they ring the station to say what should we do?. So we have help line numbers which we share with them”. Looking at the current situation and the recurrent cases in South Australia Kym thinks both the media and the

people need to be guided by the health expert. ‘they are the ones that need to advise and then we need total cooperation from the population, I think all we can do as a media organisation is to continue to reinforce the ideas that these are the things that we need to do to stay safe” Kym said he is not convinced it is over yet so, even though it looks like things are getting back to normal we should all be mindful and we cannot afford to be complacent. It was great talking-to Kym and MCCSA appreciates the opportunity we have using the station for our community voices monthly broadcast.