Global TV, which has faced criticism for not being too ethnic friendly, held a panel discussion on diversity at their BC headquarters in Burnaby on Thursday. The top station in BC met with members of the South Asian community for the first time to talk about outreach and the apparent lack of Global’s connection with the South Asian community. A diverse group of men and women, which included RCMP officer Nikki Basra, LINK editor R. Paul Dhillon (journalist-filmmaker), actors Manish Sharma and Leena Manro, who assembled the panel, Gurp Sian of South Asian Arts, community worker Sukhi Pangalia and others from business, social and community backgrounds, told Top Global BC brass that the station isn’t doing a great job of covering stories from our community including the recent Bollywood Wedding play and an important anti-bullying music video called Won’t Stop by Sid Bhullar, which was eventually covered by their competitor CBC news. A lively debate ensued that didn’t pull back any punches and told it like it is! Global’s top executive Jeff Fisher acknowledged that the station wants to be proactive in covering the community and the discussion will help it do that. Ethnic communities are growing and represent huge buying power and television, like mainstream newspapers, are seeing shrinking viewership and are looking at the ethnic viewers to make up the decline!
