Editorial: Real news better for minorities

Lincoln Tan, a New Zealand Chinese journalist, has begun to share that community's news and views with Herald readers. His column yesterday offered an insight into the difficulties facing any journalist who reports a minority's affairs. Tan described how he was approached by another Chinese journalist who took a critical view of his contribution to a Herald article on prostitution among Chinese women in Auckland.

He was asked, "As a Chinese reporter, do you think of your responsibility to the Chinese community?" He asked his inquisitor what that responsibility was, and he says she replied, "To protect Chinese face." That is one way of saying what members of all minorities are inclined to say to anyone who publishes their problems. No minority wants to be ignored by the mainstream media but nor do they want to be reported in the way that general affairs are covered.

That is not unusual; industries, arts, sports and the like also welcome public attention on their own terms and all are liable to turn on the professional reporter whose first and only loyalty is to a wider audience. But most industries, arts, sports and the like learn to live with objective coverage as the price of the public attention they need to sell their products or attract financial support. It may be less clear to ethnic minorities that critical reporting can do them any good. Yet it does.

Honest, credible reporting of their problems is, in fact, the only way that they will become better known to the majority. Very few people are going to read or listen to news from a minority if that news amounts to a relentless diet of non-contentious, culturally affirming comment and ceremony. The reason very few want to read or listen to much of that sort of "positive" material is not just that it is boring but, more important, it is not candid. It is the public face of people who are afraid to let other people get to know them well. Its effect is not at all positive; it leaves the audience unconvinced and its prejudices reinforced.

It takes courage for a minority to accept open public discussion of its problems and concerns. It can reasonably ask that those who report its affairs know the subject intimately. Nobody welcomes criticism from "outsiders", whether the subject is of ethnic, religious, cultural or gender concern. And for good reason. Outsiders are unlikely to understand nuances and will either overstate problems or, more likely these days, feel disqualified from covering them critically. For all those reasons mass media have made strenuous efforts to diversify their voices of late.

But the task of a minority reporter can be a thankless one, unappreciated by his or her own people, who regard their blemishes to be nobody else's business. The professional journalist has no obligation, or desire, to be a mouthpiece or representative of any group in society, but that is exactly what a minority seems to expect of intimates assigned to cover its community. When they report the community warts and all, they are liable to suffer questioning not just of their allegiance but, as Lincoln Tan also discovered, their ethnic status.

They can find reassurance in the knowledge that in serving the general public interest they are also serving the ultimate best interests of their people. No minority prospers in any society by keeping its problems to itself. The minorities that have carved out a secure, confident place in Western societies are those that have been able to discuss themselves frankly, laugh at themselves, revel in their common humanity as well as their cultural distinctions. They ought to value those of their own who connect them with the wider community. Honest, credible journalism is ultimately to the good of all.