Page - 87 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Petra Herczeg | Migrants and Ethnic Minorities in Austria 87 - Migrants’ media aiming at a specific migrant readership. There are many print media which are in Turkish or target the Turkish community – media such as “Yeni Vatan”, “Yeni Hareket”, “Öneri”, “Aktüel Haber”, and “Vienna Post”. These periodicals cover the social and political spectrum of opinions among Turkish migrants, are distributed free of charge and financed by advertisements. “Echo. The first and only magazine for the second generation” is edited six times a year. In Vienna, there are also some periodicals available to migrants from former Yugoslavia in their languages. There is no Turkish-language daily produced in Austria itself. 4.2 Semi-autonomous Ethnic Groups and the Public Broadcasting Company The public broadcasting company ORF is required by law to offer pro- grammes in the native languages of all officially recognized semi-autonomous minorities . The law on public broadcasting from 2001 specifies that the ORF broadcast appropriate programmes for any recognized ethnic minority, but does not make any stipulations about the use of languages. The European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages was ratified by Austria in 2001. Yet, the Charter entails no further requirements related to additional multilingual programmes for semi-autonomous minorities.3 Debates on the use of minority and migrants’ languages take place within the context of debates on the presence, use, and impacts of languages in the public sphere and can take various forms. At any rate, the EUMC report stated, “members of many migrant groups and minorities are not presented in the media as individuals. This is due partly to the problems arising from the absence of employees from these groups in mainstream media as well as to the lack of strong minority media in Austria” (EUMC 2002, 322). 3 I am familiar with the conditions of the production of minority programmes, as I worked on the Burgenland-Croatian editorial staff for radio and television broadcasts for 8 years. Of course, I am also aware that assessment of media work can diverge dramatically, depending upon whether the perspective is an external or internal one. My colleagues and I often encountered significant problems in finding interview partners who were able to expound on certain topics in Croatian. Frequently, the language competence of these speakers – even in their native tongue – proved to be deficient.