12 Mar Ethnic Media Spreads the Word to Help Stop the Hate
Jen Lemberger, ethnic media program manager for the California State Library; Jean Ho of News for Chinese, top right; and SweSwe Aye of the Myanmar Gazette participated in a virtual discussion on ethnic media’s role in the state’s fight to stop hate. (Screenshot captured by Julia Métraux for CC Pulse)
By Julia Métraux
California’s Stop the Hate ethnic media grantees are collaborating to help get the word out about hate crime victim services and the CA vs. Hate reporting hotline.
The California government has awarded millions of dollars in grants to organizations across the state that work to prevent hate crimes and to help people affected by them. In turn, it has also given grants to ethnic media outlets to boost outreach in the hopes of making people more aware of and more likely to take advantage of the services out there. The Pulse is among the media grantees.
In a virtual conversation March 4, three media grant recipients discussed how they are highlighting and working with other Stop the Hate grantees, and shared tips and lessons learned so far.
For media outlets serving ethnic and other underrepresented communities, community engagement can be an important way not only to build trust but also to learn what readers need from the publication.
“Being the ethnic media, you speak the language that they use, so what happened is that you can be the in-language liaison,” said Jean Ho, who works for News for Chinese. Given the mental health stigma in some immigrant communities, which can be aggravated by hate crimes, Ho finds ethnic media can alert people to helpful organizations.
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According to a report from the University of California Riverside, there are around 300 ethnic media publications in California in English and 36 other languages. Early ethnic media outlets included the Black press and Jewish newspapers, and they expanded to serve Latinx and Asian communities. Many of these communities have also been the target of rising hate crimes, emphasizing the need for ethnic media to make sure people get the support they need.
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Doing meaningful work that can help marginalized communities better understand what resources are available to them can take time. SweSwe Aye of the Myanmar Gazette said it is important for journalists to be mindful of this when reaching out to organizations, as many are already stretched thin.
“We have to be patient and mindful for our initial contact [with] the organizations…because all organizations are busy with their services,” Aye said.
The Canoga Park-based Myanmar Gazette, which is the only Burmese-language newspaper in the U.S., ended up working with the Oakland-based Asian Health Services to make a video.
“We drove to San Francisco Bay Area, and we had a two-hour discussion … with the Asia Health Services team at the Mayor’s Office of Oakland,” Aye said. “Asian Health Services broke a huge barrier of our community to get access to the mental health services.”
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For the San Joaquin Valley Media Alliance, president Pam Whalen said it was crucial to reach out to community leaders in both English- and Spanish-speaking communities in Fresno, Madera and Tulare counties.
“We did that by really reaching out very early in each community to the activists and leaders that were engaged in that in each of the communities and brought them in in the planning process of putting the town halls together,” Whalen said. “They identified what the issues were.”
Ho also wants seniors in Chinese communities to be able to share their journeys and challenges in their own words, which has led to a new project that News for Chinese is undertaking.
“They are inviting senior members in the community to share their story, hopefully, and once that’s organized and structured, they actually will broadcast the narrative stories on the radio,” Ho said.
This resource is supported in whole or in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library in partnership with the California Department of Social Services and the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs as part of the Stop the Hate program. To report a hate incident or hate crime and get support, go to CA vs Hate.
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