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9. “Foreign Voices”: Multicultural Broadcasting and Immigrant Representation at Germany’s Radio MultiKulti
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>> 179 9 “Foreign Voices” Multicultural Broadcasting and Immigrant Representation at Germany’s Radio MultiKulti Kira Kosnick In the wake of labor migration that brought large numbers of migrants from the Mediterranean region to Germany during the 1960s and ’70s, radio broadcasting emerged as the most important media technology to supply so-called guest workers with media contents in their native languages. During a period in which the development of information and communication technology did not yet allow for the transnational circulation of media contents, German public service broadcasters developed special foreignlanguage radio programs to service labor migrants as both orientation help and a “bridge to home” (Kosnick 2000). Over time, the purpose of this programming changed: with labor migration increasingly recognized as an immigration process rather than a temporary sojourn, public service broadcasters sought to provide integration-oriented programs and developed 180 > 181 to earsplitting techno music? “Get some foreign [ausländische] voices,” the editor tells me. My piece is to be run as a trailer in the morning program, with the moderator giving more specific information about the parade. The voices in my trailer have to speak for themselves; no names or special context will be given that could indicate immigrant origin and the like. So, the editor says, “get some accents!” I spend a hot summer day out on the streets with my microphone. First, I go to a neighborhood in Wedding, an inner-city district with a high percentage of Turkish residents. I walk up to young people on the street whom I identify as potentially “ethnic,” of immigrant background based on their looks, and I ask in German, “What do you think of the Loveparade? Will you go?” Most are eager to answer and have a lot to say. It is only after having talked to about five people that I come to realize my predicament: who on earth will identify their authentic and appropriate “ethnic difference,” given that almost all the answers have been produced in the local Berlin dialect? Second- and third-generation migrants do not, of course, speak German with a foreign accent. I decide to shelve the project for the day and talk it over with the editor. When I report back on my dilemma the following day, she does not respond immediately but just looks at me with an expression of slight annoyance and amusement. Then she offers a single piece of advice: “But you do know what it is that we’re looking for, don’t you? So just go get it.” I am dismissed and take to the streets once more. I get lucky with a few people in front of a shopping center, though they are not particularly young. Opinions about the Loveparade are forthcoming in accented voices. Not enough, though. Eventually, I end up in front of the language-instruction center in my own neighborhood, where a friend of mine is attending a “German for foreigners” course. During breaks, the students assemble to smoke in front of the building. There is no danger of not finding accents there, and my friend and her classmates are eager to help me out. The problem is, most of the students are tourists rather than immigrants, and thus not exactly the people the trailer is claiming to represent. But the trailer needs to get done, and so I collect a beautiful-sounding assortment of accents and statements ranging from “I hate the whole thing” to “oh, yes, I’ll definitely go,” just as the editor has requested, in the interest of “balanced objectivity.” My friend wants to be included: after all, being young and Italian and planning to stay in the city, she actually qualifies! I hand her the microphone , and she rehearses a sentence she herself has come up with: “Oh, no, I don’t like the music at the Loveparade. I’d much rather listen to Radio MultiKulti !” Eventually, she has a laughing fit. In the afternoon, I return to the station and cut the trailer, including her statement and subsequent laughter 182 > 183 counter such attitudes was a central legitimizing factor in the political decision to establish the station in the first place and was continuously mobilized in the station’s ultimately futile efforts to secure permanent funding. It was after the racist murders in the cities of Solingen and Mölln in 1993 that the often-voiced demand for multicultural broadcasting finally found sufficient political support in the Berlin state parliament. A station that could serve as...