The Red, White, Blue, and Gold
Three days out of the week, I would sit in my soft pink inflatable chair in front of the television to just watch The Filipino Channel (TFC) and pretended I knew what was being said in the news. My mother would find me dancing to the theme music of “Wowowee” while trying to not burn my tongue as I ate one of her famous lumpias.
For as long as I can remember, my home was always bilingual- English and Tagalog. My mother from the Philippines and my biological father was from Canada, but he was never part of the picture, only my step father who happened to be half Filipino and whose Tagalog was very broken. My mother made it her priority to ensure that I would be able to understand Tagalog by surrounding our home with Filipino media, but was later shifted to American media when I started grade school. The shows she would put on ranged from soap operas, to popular gameshows, and also the most popular news channel, ABS-CBN. Besides the shift into American media in my household, there was a bit of Chinese influence that was introduced due to my Chinese heritage from my grandmother.
Unlike the news media here in the United States as well as China, there is no censorship in what the Filipino news outlets would produce. The content was very graphic and disturbing- images that a four year old should not be exposed to. For example, American media would talk about a mass murder but will not allow the viewer to be exposed to the fatalities of the event. In the Filipino media, they show images of victims that would sometimes include their faces, which in turn resonated with me while I was growing up. It was a bit more difficult for me to adjust to a different type of consumption for news. Along those lines, I never came across a diverse or bilingual news outlet that represented both the Filipino and American community while growing up. Personally, I think this was unsuccessful because it is difficult for a community to research and produce newsworthy content in the mass media since these communities are not able to speak for themselves. Although, there is one factor that I find very unique about Filipino media that I noticed not many other ethnic groups have accomplished is that they are able to incorporate the English language into their scripts, whether it be on television or in print. There is a lot of history that plays a part in this, but to keep it short and simple, it is now a requirement that English is to be taught in grade school.
So this now raised the question for me: what is ethnic media? Ethnic media is simply this, media that is generated and or produced by the dominant ethnic group. As I stated earlier, majority of the Filipino media is still influenced by American media. Ethnic media is here to provide us insight and also give power to certain news outlets that is created and produced by immigrants. If there was a parallel internet that had proper representation for the Filipino community, I honestly feel that there would not be much of a shift in ethnic media. I say this lightly because majority of Filipinos today heavily rely on word of mouth, but what I’ve also noticed is that the Filipinos have been able to easily adapt to the American culture, thus enables for easy marketing for restaurants, small business, etc.
