Failure of PING and remedy to CALD media

Last Friday, it was reported by the Guardian that the Public Interest News Gathering (PING) grant initiative had granted $10.4 million to Australian Community Media (ACM) but ACM had failed to retain its 138 regional publications with 86 suspended in the pandemic.

This grant was announced by Communication Minister Paul Fletcher on 29 June 2020. It had distributed $53m to over 100 commercial television, newspaper, and radio businesses in regional Australia. The grant was a great support to regional journalism during the pandemic. Regional Australia also had the Jobkeeper and Jobseeker. The closure of so many publications of ACM suggests that the “public interest” of news in the regional area has not been maintained. The performance of the PING fund was unsatisfactory. This grant simply failed in its purpose of establishment.

On the other hand, during this pandemic, the interest of the CALD community in receiving news support had been neglected by the federal government. The federal government has not given any grant to CALD media even CALD communities show that they seldom use mainstream (or regional) media. During this Covid pandemic, the federal government had simply neglected the needs of journalism needs of CALD communities.

In March 2020 I had written to the Prime Minister and the then Minister of Multicultural Affairs Alan Tudge about the need of providing Covid news to CALD communities through CALD media platforms. In June 2020 I had the opportunity to ask Alan Tudge in person similar questions, about the need to support CALD media. The answer was bureaucratic. The minister replied that the government had already translated information that would be available by CALD communities and media on the website. The CALD community organizations were encouraged to distribute this information. The federal government would also provide CALD advertising as usual. And that was all the offer by the federal government. And we had not seen any support to CALD media like that of PING.

PING was seen to be important in saving some of the regional media but the CALD media was left on its own. It is not a surprise to see that CALD communities are most affected by misinformation and had a higher proportion of the Covid-19 infected patients, and also the least percentage of the vaccinated.

The federal government should apologize to the CALD communities and provide a remedy to this situation immediately.

Raymond Chow

Publisher, BlessingCALD