Transcript
The Media Diet of a Californian Afghan
November 10, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: We're back with On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Fremont, California is a suburban town between Oakland and San Jose. It's also home to the largest population of Afghan immigrants in the country. Reporter Raquel Maria Dillon went to Fremont to see how the tight immigrant community is processing the events of September 11th. They're doing it with the help of some trusted voices in the media. Their own.
RAQUEL MARIA DILLON: Arfa Azizi Kyumi [sp?] works in the kitchen of Salong Pass Restaurant in the heart of the Fremont neighborhood called Little Kabul. She came to the U.S. only last March. She was an Afghan refugee in Pakistan until she got married to a U.S. citizen and came to Fremont.
ARFA AZIZI KYUMI: My family live in Pakistan. I am very unhappy, because where is the fighting--
RAQUEL MARIA DILLON: Kyumi can't express her feelings in her limited English, so her boss, restaurant manager, Wahid Andeesha [sp?], translates.
WAHID ANDEESHA: She says we're feeling sorry for all those innocent people that they're a victim of politics - in Pakistani and Russians.
RAQUEL MARIA DILLON: Like many, Kyumi first heard about the military bombings in Afghanistan on TV.
WAHID ANDEESHA: Actually she said we were watching Indian channel where the - suddenly the whole thing changed to showing the American bombarding Afghanistan.
RAQUEL MARIA DILLON: Andeesha left Kabul over 20 years ago, built this business and sent his kids to American schools, but he still dreams of returning to a peaceful Afghanistan some day. He is typical of many Afghans in Fremont who blame the Pakistani government for the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in their homeland.
WAHID ANDEESHA: The information that's in our paper, it doesn't say on American television or radio because you're close friend of Pakistanis.
RAQUEL MARIA DILLON: The Fremont Afghan community produces and consumes print, broadcast and web news media. It's in Farsi, Dari, Persian, Pashtu and English. There's a weekly, Omed, from Virginia -- a monthly newsletter caravan published in nearby Alameda and several web sites devoted to Afghan music and culture.
Most are produced by former Kabul journalists in their spare time and most side with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban.
Before the recent scrutiny of Afghanistan, Afghan publications and programs were often the only place immigrants could turn to for news of home and for news in general. [AFGHAN NEWS PROGRAM MUSIC]
WOMEN: [SPEAKING IN ONE OF AFGHAN LANGUAGES]
HARUN SAMAY: [SPEAKING IN ONE OF AFGHAN LANGUAGES]
RAQUEL MARIA DILLON: That's Harun Samay - a radio producer for Azadi Afghan Radio which is broadcast in the Bay Area, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles.
HARUN SAMAY: We have been telling the American media over the past 5, 6 years that - what was going on in Afghanistan and nobody ever covered it, so I don't, I kind of questioned their expertise on that.
RAQUEL MARIA DILLON: Samay says Azadi Radio tries to be objective, because there's so much mis-information and rhetoric about Afghanistan.
HARUN SAMAY: That's why when we get from news media, from Reuters or anybody else, we try to confirm it with the locals there -- resistance or the Taliban or from Pakistani sources or from -directly from American State Department or Defense Ministry personnel.
RAQUEL MARIA DILLON: Other Afghan-American journalists strive towards a different goal.
FAREETA ANWADI: I really feel that there is a tremendous need for our community to have a voice.
RAQUEL MARIA DILLON: Fareeta Anwadi [sp?] hosts another weekly radio news magazine called Eternal Images. It features music and recipes as well as news. She wants to keep Afghan culture alive for younger Afghans -- the children of the ex-patriates, and she says it's important to keep recent arrivals and non-English speakers informed.
FAREETA ANWADI: They are very isolated among themselves and the majority of the elders don't know that much English to get the information from television and radio. You know, from the radio we want to give them all kinds of information, first of all.
SANDY CLOSE: Whatever it was that mainstream media was not communicating, people now have the technology to create a presence for themselves within the media culture.
RAQUEL MARIA DILLON: Sandy Close runs New California Media, a coalition of over 400 ethnic news organizations from around the state. She says in the so-called "New California," a lot of folks, not just Afghans, read or watch ethnic media.
SANDY CLOSE: So you're going to get Chinese language media; you're going to get African-American Veteran Weeklies; you're going to get radio stations in Spanish.
RAQUEL MARIA DILLON: Back in Afghanistan allegiances and identity are determined by ethnicity and language, Pashtun, Tajik or Uzbek. Fareeta Anwadi hopes those divisions all fall away as immigrants start to call Fremont home.
FAREETA ANWADI: That is my aim. That is why I am still working with the media -- to tell people that they're all Afghan.
RAQUEL MARIA DILLON: For On the Media, I'm Raquel Maria Dillon in Fremont, California.