Latest news with #Taran
The Irish Sun
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
‘I told my hairdresser the story of my conception', says RTE star Doireann Garrihy in hilarious radio confession on air
RTE star Doireann Garrihy has made a live radio confession about the conception of her baby. The 2 Doireann Garrihy has shared a baby confession live on air 2 Doireann left her co-hosts shocked by the admission On yesterday's show, Hugh told how he had recently got very close with his local barber, even going as far as to plan trips abroad together. Taran then joked: "I was considered following a hairdresser to Doireann laughed as she agreed: "Listen, I get it." READ MORE IN DOIREANN GARRIHY Taran emphasised: "Like I thought it'd be easier to go over and start a new life than to start over with a new hairdresser." Doireann then cut across Taran to highlight how close she is with her own hairdresser. The mum-to-be said: "I'm pretty sure I told the story of my conception to my hairdresser." Hugh and Taran immediately sat back in their seats in disbelief as they exclaimed: "What?!" Mo Doireann chuckled as she added: "No I actually did, I told a number of people actually, because there is actually a story to it. "But, we're not going to get into that on the national airwaves." Doireann Garrihy shares pregnancy symptom Hugh was left gobsmacked by the information as he slowly said: "Oh. My. God." Taran joked: "Yeah its best not to get into it." Yesterday, Doireann and her husband Mark Mehigan celebrated a The six months ago at the K Club, Kildare , on November 29, 2024. LOVEBIRDS And just a few months later Doireann announced that she is The 2FM host took to wedding day as they're six months married today. She captioned her post: "Six months of us @mehiganmark." One photo showed the newly weds on the dance floor on their big day and revealed that their first dance song was You Get What You Give by New Radical. SWEET TRIBUTE The 33-year-old came onto her Instagram Stories as well to share the kind gesture Mark did for her. Doireann said: "The perfect addition to my iced coffee . Mark surprised me with a smaller version of our wedding cake. " Chocolate biscuit from 2210. Like... the most sensationally delicious thing of all time. This will be breakfast." While Mark paid his own special tribute for Doireann with a loved-up wedding snap and said: "Six months married to the beautiful Doireann Garrihy today."
The Hindu
23-04-2025
- The Hindu
Into the maze
'Can you believe this place? It feels like we are in some adventure movie, except it's all real!' Taran and his family had just explored the Portuguese fort in Diu and were making their way to the Naida caves close by. With unique rock formations, hollows, arches and maze-like tunnels, it was nothing like they had seen before. 'I think I have lost track of time and gone back centuries to solve an intricate puzzle or game,' Amma was looking up at the gigantic holes in the ceiling of the caves. Light streamed in, illuminating the sand-coloured rock formations in different hues of brown, cream mauve. It was surreal and beautiful. 'I feel like I'm in the Jumanji game and my fate will be decided by the roll of a dice,' whispered Appa. 'Also, why am I whispering?' Amma and Taran smiled, as they continued exploring Naida caves. 'These caves were hacked by the Portuguese to build the fort; hence the holes and steps,' said Appa. 'It's like a labyrinth. How did anyone make their way around?' wondered Taran. 'Well, the Portuguese soldiers were known to hide here during wars. I'm sure they had their way of marking the caves,' replied Amma. Natural wonder 'Some scientists say these cave formations are all natural. There are about 19 interlinked caves. These trees growing out of the rock formations shows the symbiotic relationship of Nature. Everything coexists side by side,' remarked Appa, as he continued, 'Speleology is the scientific study of caves. The science incorporates the study of geology, archaeology and biology, and the processes by which they form and change over time.' He was still whispering, almost as if he didn't want to wake up the 'caves'. There were no religious symbols anywhere, but still there was a special aura about the place. 'What a cool job to have studying caves,' whistled Taran. He took lots of photographs of light streaming in through openings and hollows. They spent over three hours exploring the place. It was a warm and humid day but it was cool in the confines of the rock formations. 'What a wonder of Nature. And so little publicity about it. They are indeed a silent witness to time gone by. I cannot wait to tell my friends all about it!' remarked Taran, as he made his way out. 'Next stop, Chakratirth beach and INS Khukri memorial,' said Appa. 'But first, a pitstop for some snacks of Diu. I was reading something about a Jetty Roll.' 'Yay! Let's go,' said Taran.
The Independent
22-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
The 15 most traumatic films to show children, from Watership Down to My Girl
Common sense tells us that the fastest way to break a young person's brain is to show them horror movies and scenes of abject violence. But this is also a bit misleading: screen-based trauma doesn't exclusively stem from an early diet of Freddy Krueger and Hostel. You could plonk your children in front of the most innocuous, PG-rated fluff and still give them long-lasting nightmares. How else to explain the plight of The Independent 's Culture and Lifestyle desks, who've curated a list of the films that traumatised them as youngsters. Is there a Jeepers Creepers in the list? A Saw? No! Instead there are numerous entries from the Disney canon and a cosy childhood romance film that inexplicably ends with one of the young lovers being stung to death by bees. Here are 15 films that, for mostly confusing reasons, penetrated and permanently altered our fragile psyches. Alice in Wonderland (1951) 'You know Dinah, we really shouldn't be doing this!' Alice says while shoving her entire body down a hole in a tree, which reveals itself to be a long pipe into hell. Disney's original Alice in Wonderland is horrible enough to maim even the most psychologically sound of adults. It's a hallucinogenic little fable that warns innocent kids not to follow their curiosity. Nothing in this film is even momentarily pleasant. Characters? Between a rabbit with an anxiety disorder and a cat with schizophrenia, they're all demented. The SFX? Grim and nightmarish. The script? Cryptic and sinister. Only a real freak like Walt Disney would have the impulse to turn a Lewis Carroll story into a kids' movie. Hannah Ewens Babe: Pig in the City (1998) When my mum took me to see Babe: Pig in the City when I was seven, she had no idea that George Miller had snuck nightmare fuel past studio bosses. I was wary immediately: gone was the warm glow of the original film, that I'd worn out on video already. In its place was a grim tale of animal poverty featuring an evil clown played by Mickey Rooney. I may have lasted the course but my popcorn didn't. It was flung in the air as I shielded my eyes from a visual that is to this day seared into my brain: a dog, dangling from a bridge by his leash, struggling to breathe as his head is trapped underwater. Jacob Stolworthy The Black Cauldron (1985) One of Disney's more obscure animated films, The Black Cauldron was also the first to receive a PG rating. Watching it today, an 18 seems more appropriate. Loosely based on author Lloyd Alexander's Welsh mythology-inspired series The Chronicles of Prydain, it follows 'assistant pig-keeper' Taran, who dreams of becoming a famous warrior, as he tries to keep his oracular pig Hen Wen from the clutches of the evil Horned King. The film is bonkers enough, made more so by a litany of oddball characters, a dark colour palette and a sinister soundtrack by Elmer Bernstein. In its worst scene, the adorable character Gurgi sacrifices himself to save Taran by jumping into the cauldron. It gave me and my younger brother nightmares for weeks, and haunts me to this day. Roisin O'Connor Cabaret (1972) and the overall Liza Minnelli oeuvre I'm aware that there's something morally horrible about being lightly traumatised by an entire person – rather than a single movie or cartoon character – but good God, did Liza Minnelli bother me as a child. The spidery eyelashes. That breathless, somewhat uncanny voice of hers. The way she seemed to glide across rooms as if her legs weren't quite real. Liza Minnelli was my Babadook, my Slender Man, my creature at the end of the bed. My parents had a Cabaret poster on our living room wall that I actively avoided looking at whenever I was in there alone, and to this day – and to the continued outrage of numerous people in my life – I have not actually seen Cabaret, so deep is my visceral aversion to it. (Joel Grey's emcee can get in the bin, too, while we're here.) Adam White Chicken Run (2000) The constant threat of death looms over Mrs Tweedy's concentration camp-cum-egg farm in Aardman's Chicken Run. The sombre mood is reflected in the film's muted grey colours – like The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers but with more poultry. As a child, it always sent me spiralling into a deep melancholy that only a few episodes of The Wild Thornberrys could remedy. Tom Murray Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) There are few things more terrifying to a young girl than The Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Robert Helpmann peering around every nook and cranny of the fictional kingdom of Vulgaria – prosthetic nose first – will forever haunt my brain. Not to mention his sinister skipping and eerie cries of 'ice cream'. It took me a long time to trust a Mr Whippy after that. Lydia Spencer-Elliott The Day After Tomorrow (2004) I've always felt the world was on the verge of ending. Yes, the climate crisis, war, and the general deterioration of society, but also because of The Day After Tomorrow, which left an indelible impression on my 13-year-old mind. Extreme weather events including snowstorms and tornadoes usher in a new ice age, changing the world forever. I have a general outlook of nihilistic optimism ('Why not do x,' I say, 'the world is going to end anyway?'), which may have started with that film. Maira Butt Free Willy (1993) Sure, Free Willy has a happy ending. Free Willy tells the uplifting tale of orphan Jesse (Jason James Richter) who befriends the titular Ocra and releases him into the wild from the clutches of an evil theme park owner. It has a very happy ending. But that triumphant storyline was lost on me as a child – I was completely rattled watching Willy's mistreatment throughout the film, which seemed to be repeated on Film4 every weekend. All I could think about were those bleak scenes of the killer whale trapped in a gigantic tank and/or fishing net, soundtracked by Basil Poledouris's melancholy string quartet score. I found the whole thing distressing. I didn't care if Willy was free or not: my brain couldn't let go of those dark, dark images. Ellie Muir The Last Unicorn (1982) This cult animated classic from 1982 features an all-star cast of voices, including Mia Farrow and Jeff Bridges. It also features a plot so trippy and terrifying that me and my sister remain traumatised 30 years later. The story follows the last unicorn (Farrow) on a quest to find her brethren – but along the way she encounters a horrific freakshow carnival, a flaming, raged-filled entity known only as the Red Bull, and the bitterness of human mortality, thwarted love and bone-crushing grief. In short: it's a lot to unpack for an eight-year-old. Helen Coffey The Lion King (1994) In the first half of The Lion King, evil uncle Scar warns us to 'be prepared', because he's cooking up a truly awful plan. It's safe to say that three-year-old me, watching the musical for the first time on VHS, was not remotely prepared for the emotional trauma I was about to undergo a few minutes later, when Scar chucks his brother, the luxuriantly maned king Mufasa, off a rock to be trampled to death by wildebeests. The words 'long live the King', which Scar hisses into Mufasa's ear before committing lion fratricide, can still activate my fight-or-flight mode (Charles' Coronation weekend was a difficult time). Worst of all, though, is young cub Simba's response to his dad's death, desperately lifting up Mufasa's paw only for it to flop to the ground, heavy and lifeless; his little cartoon face is horribly expressive. I'm pretty sure watching The Lion King was the first time I learned about death. Up to this point, my toddler cultural diet had pretty much consisted of wall-to-wall Rosie and Jim: great for learning about how canals work, less enlightening on, say, the pain of mourning a parent. And the other traumatising part? Those revolting squishy grubs that Timon and Pumbaa procure from under rocks to eat as snacks. I'm a vegetarian now. Katie Rosseinsky Mrs Doubtfire (1993) The last (and final) time I attempted to watch Mrs Doubtfire, the tears were simply too much. I couldn't breathe. Sure, in that moment it might've been down to my hormones. But that film has traumatised me since I was child. Why? Because I come from a broken home and while I can't relate to a father going above and beyond to try and get closer to his children (mine moved to America when I was four), it's something I've never been able to separate from my own experience. Maybe because I wish I had a father who'd done the same. It doesn't help that I'm also a huge fan of Robin Williams, who coincidentally lived in the same area of northern California as my dad before his untimely death by suicide in 2014. Now, on the rare occasions when I visit my dad, we drive over the Golden Gate Bridge before going through a tunnel with a painted rainbow over the top. Since 2014, it has officially been known as the Robin Williams tunnel. Olivia Petter My Girl (1991) As Kevin McCallister, the cherubic, eyebrow-wiggling face of the 1990 smash Home Alone, the young Macaulay Culkin was the toast of fledgling millennial pranksters. Evidently, as a six-year-old, I didn't quite realise that he was acting; to me he truly was Kevin, this wisecracking, parent-defying scamp who could outwit Joe bloody Pesci, a man who had previously scared the hell out of me in Moonwalker (no, I hadn't seen Goodfellas back then). Imagine my horror, then, when Culkin – our adorable little Kevin – reappeared as Anna Chlumsky's heartthrob in My Girl (1991), only to be stung to death by a swarm of bees. Having dragged my parents to see it at the Whiteleys in Bayswater, I left my seat reduced to hot, gulping sobs, my heart indelibly shattered, my head forever reminded that there is nothing as futile as 'happily ever after'. Plus, I've never been able to listen to The Temptations. Patrick Smith The NeverEnding Story (1984) There were a few things about Wolfgang Petersen's The NeverEnding Story that unnerved me as a child. There was Falkur, a dragon who somehow had both pearly scales and ivory fur. There was also the fact that it was my first taste of existentialism as I watched Atreryu try to save the magical realm of Fantasia from a vague disease called The Nothing – which is what happens when 'people lose their hopes and forget their dreams'. But most harrowing of all was the slow, slow death of Artax, the film's gallant white horse, who sinks beneath muddy darkness in the Swamp of Sadness while his little boy companion watches on in horror, grasping on to a rein that eventually connects to nothing. The scene instilled in me both a love of horses and an irrational lifelong fear of quicksand. Annabel Nugent One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) As a relatively sheltered boy of 10 or 11 years old, was I too young to watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? Probably, but in the scheme of kids being shown age-inappropriate fare, we're hardly talking about Bone Tomahawk here. Nonetheless, the multi-Oscar-winning film left a deep imprint on me – specifically the scene at the end, whereupon the nervous Billy Bibbit (Brad Dourif) is found in a pool of blood, having taken his own life. I suppose some of the credit, traumatising-a-child-ingly speaking, must go to Dourif, a truly phenomenal and underappreciated character actor whose wiry and brilliant debut performance here made the scene all the more devastating. I still find the scene gruesome and disturbing when watching it as an adult; for a child, the sad, bloody tragedy of it is downright bewildering. I'd have been better off watching Chucky. Louis Chilton Watership Down (1978) It's often said that pets are a good way for children to learn about death. But in the absence of actual, furry, cuddly pets, it turns out animated rabbits will teach these lessons almost as well. I didn't have pets as a kid, but we did have a telly and one day, Watership Down – overflowing with beautiful, heart-wrenching scenes of bunny carnage – appeared upon it. It would be melodramatic to say I was never the same again but, to this day, I can't hear Art Garfunkel's 'Bright Eyes' without my bottom lip wobbling slightly.
National Geographic
20-02-2025
- Entertainment
- National Geographic
I took a leap of faith—and it led me in search of history's lost slave ships
It transports me back to a place of remembrance—back to the 1970s. To my childhood. To Wells Drive in Atlanta, Georgia. To the apartment on the top floor of a two-story walk-up where I lived with my mother—just the two of us in five rooms. How does the universe match parents and children? I don't know. But I do know that my mother was the perfect parent for me. She was a reading teacher. I loved to read. And my mom had access to books. She used to bring home boxes and boxes of them from her reading conferences and conventions. The joy I felt opening those boxes, pulling out the crisp packaged pages, smelling their woody scent, cracking open their spines, and disappearing into other worlds. I could spend all day with a book and all night long reading it under the covers with my flashlight. I loved fantasy books the most. Magic. Quests. Dragons. Unicorns. Outer space. Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time series was one of my favorites. I yearned for Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Which to tap outside my window and charge me with helping to save the universe. I so wanted to be Charles Wallace—not Meg, mind you—anointed with a big life purpose. Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain was another favorite; I would reread the entire series each year. I wanted to be Taran, discover that I had a hidden birthright and set out with a sword on a magical adventure. I would close my eyes and wish hard for the universe to name me as worthy and call on me to do something big to help the world. Back then, my imagination was big, broad, deep. No limits. But as I grew up, I began to notice that Black girls were never at the heart of these stories. And the books that did have Black girls in them were often focused on tragedy and pain, based in the grimmest of realities. I came to understand that there was a prevailing narrative about Black people—a narrative created through a distorted lens that emphasized, to the exclusion of much else, our struggle, our pain, our trauma. From my front window, I could see a big hill that curved upward between the buildings in my apartment complex. When my mom got home from work, I would ride my bike up and down that hill. I remember huffing up and then soaring down with my legs out to the side, hands off the handlebars, the beads at the end of my braids clacking in the wind.
CBC
15-02-2025
- Business
- CBC
'Without journalism, it's dark': Pouring their hearts into ethnic media, coping with rapid change
Social Sharing YouTube host Anhelina Taran carried her own plant into the rented studio, then helped hang a brown sheet to frame the makeshift set. It looked like an old bedsheet, but soon studio owner Luiza Yaromchuk was busy steaming the wrinkles out. By the time the volunteer crew was ready to shoot their weekly local news instalment, it looked smooth and professional. This is the fledgling news upstart, Taran, a Ukrainian-language media outlet serving newcomers in the Calgary community. It has news on everything from why you really must clear the snow from your walk, to how to optimize your tax filing and the latest changes in Canada's immigration policy. It's one small upstart in an industry sector of local ethnic media — a group of mostly small businesses that suffered many of the same challenges dogging mainstream media, but one that's also innovating and finding new ways to serve a need. At their best, these outlets have been proven to help immigrant communities lean in and get more civically engaged in their new cities and country, breaking down barriers and increasing participation. But researchers say policymakers don't tend to recognize those benefits with support or training for the journalists involved, and turning out a useful product takes a lot of work. "Honestly, sometimes when we meet, we think maybe we can't do this today. Maybe we're finished," Taran said, looking around the set. Her team members are all recent arrivals themselves but they encourage each other to keep going. "Our energy keeps us together." "It's a platform, a bridge for our community, for people because they trust us," said Taran. "We try to do as much as we can." Taran came to Canada two years ago and left behind a career in journalism. In Canada, she's working full time as a marketing co-ordinator for a local real estate company. Taran is a passion project she's running on the side, promoting it on the social media platform Telegram. She sells ads but pays for most of the expense herself. The first media outlets in Canada focused on specific ethnic communities started more than 100 years ago and took off in recent decades as immigrant communities flourished. The media monitoring group MIREMS now follows roughly 600 publications across Canada, about a third in print, a third online, and the rest in radio or television. MIREMS (Multilingual International Research and Ethnic Media Services) monitors the outlets for clients, including the Government of Alberta, to spot misinformation and highlight community concerns. It follows 56 outlets in Calgary alone, 40 in Edmonton, and that doesn't include small upstarts and podcasts like Taran. Daniel Ahadi is a senior lecturer at Simon Fraser University who recently co-edited a handbook on ethnic media. He says no one knows exactly how many Canadian ethnic media outlets there are, especially now that many of them have moved to new digital platforms. But from their reach and growth, he says it's clear immigrants in Canada value these efforts long after their communities are well-established. Outlets provided a lifeline Ahadi remembers his mom watching television in Farsi when they first came to Canada from Iran. She still watches today, even after a 30-year career working in English in the public service. In those early years, "those outlets provide a lifeline," he said. "They provide vital information, which is a really good start for people to feel they're not alone in this; there's a community they can rely on." "That's an immensely important psychological support because, without it, there's a sense of loss and despair, especially in the first stages of migration." Copy-and-paste news But the media sector is changing. As the Internet grew, advertising moved online, where it was cheaper and easier to target audiences. That wreaked havoc with mainstream print and broadcasting budgets, limiting their ability to hire reporters. Similarly, in Ahadi's book, The Handbook of Ethnic Media in Canada, one author describes the challenges hitting print media and says some outlets have shrunk to little more than a sheet of advertisements with stories cut and pasted from the country of origin. Television broadcasting has also suffered. Another author in the handbook said some local shows laid off journalists, replacing their work with stories read from text taken straight from state-run media overseas after the federal government changed the Canadian content regulations. But every outlet is different. Radio is a favourite medium in several immigrant communities, and social or digital platforms, like Taran's YouTube channel, opened the door to more voices. When Ahadi first started picking up a newspaper at the Iranian grocery store in the 1990s, there were nearly a dozen options. Now there's two or three, and instead he follows Farsi-speaking influencers or media personalities on Instagram, from Vancouver and around the world. "I follow them for local news, local events, local debates and issues, controversies, politics, debates. And they're followed. I mean, one of the biggest ones in Vancouver has about 100,000 followers. "Many people in Iran follow these outlets because they are thinking about migration.… People sort of tune in and out from different parts of the world." "Bike lanes, traffic, crime, overdose — they cover anything that is covered in mainstream media. They covered Trudeau's resignation.… Some of them are pro-Trudeau, some of them are anti-Trudeau. On top of that, they also cover Iranian news." Back in Calgary, Jayanta Chowdhury is quick to offer a tour of his studio. He's the station manager for RED FM 106.7FM, a radio station that now broadcasts in 21 languages. He lingers proudly by the photos on the wall of famous local politicians who came in for interviews. A new 'foreign correspondents' club' Chowdhury got his start in ethnic media in the late 1990s. At that point, there was just one radio station programmed in Calgary with South Asian languages for just two hours a day, he said. "People were just waiting for 7 o'clock just to hear news, their language and music." Then these new outlets took off. Soon there were two mainstream radio stations with shows in multiple languages, language programs on the community station CJSW, and that was in addition to the many newspapers, new and old. For a time, multicultural TV was even shot locally with an OMNI TV studio. But that was the heyday for ethnic media in Calgary on those traditional platforms. Then came the digital revolution. Chowdhury said there's been few grants or government funding to help with training and innovation. And many of the entrepreneurs and individual show hosts can't afford to take journalism, ethics and legal courses at university when they're doing this as a passion project and supporting a family. And he sometimes wonders how much research, fact-checking and journalism is being done by the social media influencers. What Canada is missing is a foreign correspondents' club, he said. "I have been to so many countries. I lived in Thailand for 12 years, in Korea, in Hong Kong, and in Brazil. As a foreigner [interested in journalism], we always go to the foreign correspondent clubs. There we have a platform to share and gain knowledge from each other, right? That's what is missing here. Canada doesn't have one of those." So last year, Chowdhury and four others founded the Asian Media Federation of Canada. They get together several times a year, and they're hoping it can grow and support more ethnic media to thrive. He's also working with CBC Calgary to host a networking event for local ethnic media on March 15. "A lot of people say that the media and journalism is a dying industry," he said. "I will say it is a living industry. It's like a volcano, you know, it can erupt any time, and when it comes, it comes in a big way." "At the end of the day, all the democratic process is only done through journalism and media. That's where we keep people informed." 'We don't understand what fuels adaptation' Research into ethnic media shows that strong newsrooms can do two things at the same time — help immigrant groups integrate into the larger community, and maintain a sense of belonging within their own cultural community. Policymakers often don't realize how important this is, said Elim Ng, an Edmonton-based policy analyst who wrote a chapter for Ahadi's book, on Chinese-language broadcasters. When outlets shrink and have more copy-and-paste content from overseas, it's not enough. People need news and to debate Canadian issues in their language, she said. That's information and connection. "When a person feels isolated, they're just less able to reach out and try new things. This connects them," she said. "They're not just bonding over shared cultural heritage. What they're bonding over is the challenge of life in Canada — everyone wants to be financially successful; no one wants to be a failure." Policymakers need to understand that, she said. "We expect all of these adaptive behaviours but we don't understand what fuels adaptation. [The media] creates a discursive space for the people." Young adults bridge the cultural divide Sherry Yu, a University of Toronto associate professor, sees another challenge. The discussion within ethnic media can be robust and nuanced, but generally the information exchange flows only in one direction. Immigrant communities hear the mainstream discussion, but little is heard of the immigrant discussion outside each community, said Yu. The online collaborative New Canadian Media tried to solve that by publishing pieces from immigrant journalists in English, but it closed in November. Yu is watching the young journalists and influencers. When they get involved online, they are often working in English and hosting conversations that span national borders and even cultural groups. She points to Lilly Singh, a YouTube star originally from Toronto with 14 million followers, as a possible example of this trend. At a smaller scale, Dozie Anyaegbunam launched The Newcomers podcast in 2023, interviewing immigrants about their journey and lessons learned. He's from Nigeria and lives in Calgary, but he interviews immigrants from many backgrounds in English. But he doesn't see this as a conversation involving only Canada's minority communities. "Immigration is not technically an ethnic conversation, even though we tend to make it so," he said. "It's a cultural conversation that cuts across communities. At the core, it's about what does it mean to be human? Because the human race is an immigrant race — we claim borders now, but the human race has immigrated in many different ways." Coming back to traditional ethnic media — media focused on serving one ethnocultural group in one location — one more example can illustrate the utility and the time that individual Canadians pour into this over the years. 'Journalism gives you an eye on society' Michael Teclemariam has been the volunteer radio host for the Eritrean community in Calgary for 20 years. He's 54 and has no formal training in journalism. He works as a shuttle driver and fleet supervisor, while taking calls and spending hours a week finding guests and going to events to prepare for his Sunday show. He says attitudes toward media in his community changed over the years. Eritrea doesn't have a free press. So when he started, launching a 30-minute program in Tigrinya with the campus and community radio station CJSW, he eased into it. He started with music and simple announcements about community life. Then he started to occasionally push the boundaries, translating and explaining local news for the community, and inviting guests onto the show to talk about mental health, Calgary and Canadian politics, and topics that were more contentious for a conservative or traditional audience. At first, he got pushback within his community, and people wondered why he would think to put subjects like that in the public realm. But gradually, he also heard from more people who appreciated it, who came to understand the role of media better over time. "Recently, someone told me that because of what I was doing, he didn't like me. He told me straight. He said, 'Mike, I didn't know what you were doing back in the day, but now I get why.'" "Having media in Calgary makes a difference because we have checks and balances," said Teclemariam. "I show our opinion, and I go to the youth, then to the Eritrean cultural school and talk with the parents about the schooling changes we've had in Alberta." "Without journalism, it's dark. You don't know — whether it's politics or social or anything. Journalism gives you an eye on society." Now in addition to the CJSW radio show, he files for Radio Erena, a transnational podcast, serving Eritreans living around the world. His dream is to expand further and create more of that two-way street — to get a job that would let him share the views and stories of the local Eritrean community — not just among themselves, but to the rest of Canada through the mainstream media.
