Jakob Hurrle and Petr Lobotka

1 The practice

2 Experiences

2.1 Strenghts

Due to the creation of privat radio programmes and the emergence of satellite TV and internet radio, today most of Berlin’s ethnic communities have alternatives to "Radio Multikulti". While some of these alternatives are made in Berlin, others are imports from the home countries. In view of the rise of Islamist movements and other fundamentalist ideologies, this leads to the? understandable question about the values and political contents that are disseminated through such programmes. While it is difficult (and problematic) to control the exchange of information in a globalised world, it is certainly right and recommendable to offer alternative information sources to minority communities, which are processed by journalists that share the values of a democratic society. The integration of "Radio Multikulti" in the public broadcasting system seems to be a very good strategy to achieve this goal without creating the impression of creating something like a propaganda channel.

In the German public discussion, the availability of satellite television from the home countries is often lamented for having worsened the migrant community’s profiency in the German language. However, at the same time there have been only very limited offers by the established media that would have targeted those parts of the German population with foreign family roots. For example, till the 1990s there was only a very limited number of people with foreign faces, names and accents working for the public broadcasting stations. The establishment of "Radio Multikulti" did not only provide a locally made information channel for Berlin’s minority populations, but it helped also to change somewhat the media culture in the rest of the country. A large number of journalists from minority communities began their career in "Radio Multikulti" and changed later to other stations, where it is today much more accepted to moderate with a foreign accent. This might increase the acceptance of mainstream media among the large percentage of people in Germany with a foreign background. 

According to empirical studies, "Radio Multikulti" reaches a large share of minority audiences in Berlin. This impression is supported by the two journalists interviewed for this case study, who stated that there is always a lot of feedback by listers of their programmes.

2.2 Critical Points

Considering the number of people with migrant background who live in Germany, one will hardly find the establishment of “Radio Multikulti” and its North Rhine Westphalian pendant “Funkhaus Europe” sufficient to reflect the cultural and linguistic diversity of listeners. In view of the fact that also the migrant population contributes with their mandatory listeners’ contribution to the costs of the public broadcasting, this discrepancy between the number of programmes targeted at migrants and the number of people with a foreign background living in Germany seems even more striking. Since TV is certainly the most important public-run information channel, the public broadcasting stations would be well-advised to no longer limit their offers to migrant populations to the sphere of radio.

The political scientist Joerg Becker of Marburg University noted in a critical assessment of the public media programmes targeted to migrants that "Radio Multikulti" has massively lost Turkish listeners after the establishment of the private Turkish language radio station “Radio Metropol”. In Becker’s view the intercultural concept of "Radio Multikulti" would have mainly reflect idealistic ideas among the majority population while failing to take into account that the city’s Turkish population would prefer a programme that is only in Turkish language.

This observation seems interesting, even though we would not follow Becker in interpreting this as a sign of a wrong concept. The migration of Turkish listeners from "Radio Multikulti" to Radio Metropol, which sends the entire day in Turkish, could rather be seen as the end of an unnormal situation, when the daily hour of Turkish programme on "Radio Multikulti" was the only Turkish radio available in the city. Due to its character as a public radio programme, measuring the success or failure of "Radio Multikulti" should be based on programme’s quality as well as the number of listeners.     

2.3 Lessons Learnt

• The public broadcasting stations should better reflect the diversity of media consumers in most of the Western European countries.

• In the case of migrants from countries with strong nationalistic or fundamentalistic currents, the provision of public media programmes in minority language can be a promising way to counter the unwelcome influence of media from the home countries.

• Minority population will not always prefer programmes in minority language. To mix reporting in minority and majority language can help to reach a mixed audience. This is a precondition for true inter-cultural communication.

• The programme offer needs to reflect the size of the groups that live in the target area. In the case of large groups (such as the Turkish minority in Berlin), it is insufficient to grant very much limited sending times, which do not allow to address sub-groups within the minority (e.g. youth, elderly, gay, highly educated).