Ethnic media in the UK

The sub-continental press is a vibrant industy in the UK

Rekha Borgohain Dixit

Rashmi Patel, a 45-year-old cab driver, has lived in London since he was nine years old. He traces his roots to the Saurashtra district of Gujarat in India, but there are hardly any relatives there any more, with the family having migrated first to Kenya, and then, the politics of the African country compelling some members to move to the UK.

Despite this tenuous familial link with India, Rashmi Patel’s family has its finger on the pulse of life in a `homeland’ it has not visited in decades. His sexagenarian mother gets her weekly dose of gossip and news from Saurashtra through Gujarat Samachar, a weekly newspaper in Gujarati, printed from London. Patel is more comfortable reading English, but he’d prefer a copy of the tabloid Eastern Eye over The Sun any day. The former, also printed from London, gives him the latest news of Bollywood, India’s film industry. It also gives him all the gossip about Indians living in the UK.

The women of his family cannot do without their daily soaps on Asian channels like Star TV and Zee TV, which they subscribe to via satellite TV. They weep over the trials and tribulations of Tulsi, the protagonist of a melodramatic serial about a huge Gujarati household. The younger ones, however, prefer tuning in to Channel V for the latest on Indipop (a genre of Indian pop music), or listening to Sunshine Radio, a London-based radio station catering exclusively to South Asians (read India and the subcontinent).

They may be completely insignificant entities in a media world dominated by powerful players like Rupert Murdoch and the BBC. But the ethnic media in the UK has its own following of loyalists, which is growing every year. Indeed, if you are befuddled by the myriad languages you hear spoken in the tube, you only need flick through paid TV channels, visit a newsagent or try tuning your radio to realise just how `foreign’ is the world of British media to the average Englishman. For almost every ethnicity that has found a home in the UK, there is at least one language newspaper, if not more. And radio and television channels, too.

With South Asians comprising the largest ethnic minority in the UK (1.6 million, or 3 per cent of this nation’s population), it’s hardly surprising that it also supports the largest ethnic media industry, catering specifically to each linguistic group within the sub continent as well as catering to all of them together as one entity. (See box)

“It was a very different readership we catered to when we launched 35 years ago,’’ says Jyotsna Shah, managing editor of Gujarat Samachar. “At that time, we were very India-centric, providing news from Gujarat for the diaspora here. Our reader was the homesick Gujarati who didn’t read or speak English.’’ She says that the character of the migrant community changed with the coming of age of second and third generation immigrants, who were more British than their parents.

Going with the Times

The newspaper evolved, too. “We began including more news of Indians in the UK. We also began presenting UK and world news in the context of the ethnic minority,’’ she adds. For instance, what a proposed change in visa norms or flight regulations would mean for the community here.

It was a natural transition for the previously bilingual paper to become completely Gujarati, and for Asian Voice, an English weekly from the same publishing house, to launch in 1999. According to Shah, both publications have a circulation of around 30,000 each.  The emergence of British-born members of minority communities has not just fuelled the growth of such publications, but also been instrumental in the creation of a news profile that isn’t just a cut-paste of Indian publications.

“These generations no longer carry the migrant hangover of their parents, who considered their ethnicity a handicap and were desperate to merge with the mainstream,’’ says Nasreen Munni Kabir, a  London-based researcher who has worked extensively on Indian cinema. “The British-born South Asians are proud to be different,’’ she notes, explaining the craze for Bollywood films, stars and Indian fashion among the youth, and the evolution of the ethnic press. 

Asjad Nazir is the editor of E-Guide, a pullout with Eastern Eye that deals with the entertainment world, Bollywood-style. Talking about ethnic publications, he says, “What started out as an initiative to connect a community in a foreign land, has evolved into such a thriving industry that it makes sound business sense to continue it, even without the tag of community service.’’

Nazir works for a newspaper that is run by the mini media conglomerate Ethnic Media Group, chaired by Gurmeet Khangura. Its offices at Aldgate (E) are smart, if not swanky, and are run by a bustling staff of almost every ethnicity - Asian, Blacks and even Caucasians. The media house publishes four weekly newspapers - Eastern Eye and its equally popular  tabloidy counterpart  New Nation, that caters to the Black ethnicities. Asian Times and Caribbean Times position themselves as “Britain’s quality newspapers’’ for the Asians and Blacks respectively.

Eastern Eye and New Nation are listed with the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC), which places their circulations at 20,844 and 22,081 respectively. Asian Times and Caribbean Times are not listed with the ABC but claim a circulation of around 19,000 copies each. The recent launch of a special Scotland edition of the Eastern Eye on popular demand s self explanatory.

Familiar Territory

So what is it that readers look forward to in these newspapers? It emerges that the trends are similar to those seen among readers of mainstream newspapers. The men like their news and sports. “With women, the health sections are very popular,’’ Shah says. And, of course, entertainment. Loads of it.

“Most ethnic newspapers published from the UK have a policy of being largely apolitical, specially with regard to UK politics,’’ says Kuldeep Bhardwaj, press attaché with the Indian High Commission. “They may support a candidate if she or he is from their community, but that’s about it. Even their editorials are more about the diaspora.’’

A typical cover story in Asian Times would read: `China begins a new era with India and Pakistan’, but it’s a straightforward report. Preeti Desai being crowned Miss Great Britain also makes big news. In the New Nation edition of the same week, the cover story is about Blair expressing sorrow over the slave trade. For Surma Weekly, a Bangla paper, the elections in Bangladesh make the lead story that same week, again general reportage.

However, a closer look at the content of some publications reveals that not all are so apolitical. Awaze Qaum (Voice of the Nation), a Punjabi publication, has strong separatist leanings. The Gujarati papers like Gujarat Samachar and Garavi Gujarat (both in a neck to neck race for largest circulation) have sympathies with the saffron brigade. “We are a campaigning newspaper. When there was trouble at the Hare Rama temple in Kazakhstan, we took a strong editorial stand,’’ says Shah.

The ethnic media also provides a lucrative medium for advertisers to reach across to specific consumer groups. Advertisements on Sunrise Radio are all about the best jewellers to go to for your daughter’s wedding or the best caterers of Indian food in town. In Nepali Sandesh, you’ll come across announcements for meetings of retired Gurkha soldiers of the British Army. The youth-oriented publications have the popular lonely heart columns.

Travel agencies advertise region-specific packages. You’ll also find advertisements about cheap phone calls home. In Caribbean Times, social service agencies frequently put up information about children from specific ethnicities who need to be adopted.

You’ve got Mail

According to Ethnic Media Group, 37 per cent of all Asians in the UK live in London. And 63 per cent of all UK Blacks live in London, too. So, both the publication as well as circulation of these newsletters is largely in the capital, though they claim to have readers across the country, who subscribe by post. And like mainstream newspapers, which are coming to terms with declining readerships, ethnic language publications, too, know that the future might just be online. Many of them have e-editions and often, subscriptions are free.

Ethnic newspapers get the bulk of their readers from the economically lower rungs. “Cab drivers, shop assistants… they form the bulk of our readers,’’ says a spokesperson of Ethnic Media Group. But many upwardly mobile people also read them, though they may not go to the newsagent in search for such a newspaper. “Some newspapers are distributed as freesheets,’’ say the Mathurs, a doctor couple. “Then we do glance through them.’’ The Gurungs, a Nepali family at Greenwich, have friends working for Nepali Sandesh. But they do not subscribe to the publication. They’d rather catch up on news from home through webcasts on the internet.

Ali Husain has been a business journalist with The Sunday Times since the last three years. But he started out his journalistic career with Eastern Eye. “It was a good learning ground. In small setups with limited budgets, you learn to multitask, you learn a lot,’’ he says fondly of his stint there. “The salary wasn’t too poor either. At £13,000 a year, it was decent enough for a beginner.’’

Radio channels are largely entertainment-driven. “My mother, who cannot read even Arabic, let alone English, tunes in to Moroccan TV or Egyptian TV. I watch Al Jazeera for news,’’ says Omar Bejraoui, a British Moroccan who works in the front office of a  hotel. “Our favourite, however, is a buy-and-sell programme  on an Arab radio channel. My mother gets all the news relevant to her - who has a sewing machine to sell or which Lebanese eatery needs a cook.. I like listening because it feels good to hear so many Arabic accents : Moroccan, Egyptian, Egyptian…’’ For reading, he’d rather pick up a mainstream British newspaper, though.

There aren’t any British television channels for ethnic minorities, but with almost every popular channel available through paid subscriptions, it’s not such a loss. And not good business sense to start a local one, either.

Culture Champs

Just how seriously are these  publications taken? Shah notes with pride that when Gujarat Samachar completed 25 years, Prime Minister Tony Blair himself made note of the achievement in Parliament. Belah Ahmed, editor of Surma Weekly, the most widely read Bangla newspapers, is often interviewed by the mainstream media on topics concerning the British Bengali population. And Nazir, who writes on the Indian film industry,  says, "The industry reads what I write and takes it seriously. When I write something negative about Gurinder Chadha (a Brit Asian film-maker) or Aishwarya Rai (former Miss World and leading Hindi film actor), I’ve had their publicists call up and request me not to be so harsh.’’

Husain, however, feels that though ethnic newspapers will remain in their ethnic bubble, they should now get more aggressive. “They’ve got the readerships. Now they should set their agendas. They can, for instance, really champion the cause of multiculturism.’’ Indeed, the ethnic media in the UK has come of age, and can only go from strength to strength.