Radio India broadcaster Gurpreet Singh works at his computer in his North Delta home Wednesday afternoon. Singh recieved a death threat letter Monday, this coming after shots were fired at the home of his boss, Maninder Gill.Brett Beadle
Shortly after a drive-by shooting at his home Monday, Maninder Gill received a phone call from the daughter of assassinated newspaper publisher Tara Singh Hayer.
Rupinder Hayer Bains wanted to show support for his work, Mr. Gill, manager of Radio India, said in an interview.
"She told me, we are with you, don't worry," Mr. Gill said. She urged him to tell police whatever he could to help them make an arrest, Mr. Gill said Wednesday. Around 10 shots were fired at Mr. Gill's home shortly after midnight Monday. No one was injured.
Twelve years after Mr. Hayer was murdered, the ethnic media in B.C. as well as Ontario remain a target for violence from listeners who are upset with what they hear and read. The editor of the Punjabi Post in Brampton was attacked last year.
Mr. Gill said the ethnic media are significantly different than mainstream media. A large portion of the community, especially those over 40 years old, do not read or understand English well. The Punjabi media are central to their lives and they become emotionally involved in what the media does, he said.
"For those over 40, more than 90 per cent in the community listen to one of the two Punjabi-language radio stations in the Vancouver area, he said. They have the radio on all the time. "We do lots of talk shows and news. We have journalists in India and people here. All levels of government, whenever they want to send a message to the Sikh community, they use our radio station," he said.
Radio India is also involved in the community. Recently, the station sponsored a forum on violence in the home. The station has also been active in charity campaigns, raising $10-million from its listeners over the past decade.
Mr. Gill started Radio India 11 years ago. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission did not allow any ethnic community to have its own program at that time, he said. When applying to renew a licence, mainstream media promise to reach out to ethnic communities. "But after that, nobody ever does," he said.
Radio India operates under U.S. broadcast rules, not those of the CRTC, because its signal comes from Blaine, Wash. This allows outspoken journalists and guests to make comments that would not be heard on Canadian federally regulated stations. The station produces its programs in Surrey, B.C. Mr. Gill estimated its audience, which stretches across Western Canada and into Washington state, at up to 400,000.
Gurpreet Singh, a Radio India talk-show host who received a death threat shortly after the drive-by shooting, said personal attacks are occasionally made on air. Listeners who are put in a bad light on the radio sometimes feel they are in the spotlight within the relatively small Punjabi community, he said.
Former B.C. attorney-general Wally Oppal, who has spoken out often about the violence in the Indo-Canadian community, said the mainstream media have bypassed the multicultural communities. "That's why we have such a vibrant ethnic media in this town," he said.
"The mainstream media does not do a good job of covering events in the communities. The only time the mainstream media takes note of the ethnic communities is when there is violence," he said. "… much of the activity that goes on in the community is not reported in mainstream media."
Relying on media in their own communities, the audience is more involved with what they hear, Mr. Oppal also said. "The insults [made on the radio]are taken a lot more seriously," he said.
However, he also said he felt the recent drive-by shooting was a blip and not indicative of widespread violence in the community.
Mr. Hayer, an outspoken journalist critical of Sikh fundamentalists, was murdered outside his home in 1998. No arrests have been made although a team of investigators continue to work on the case, police said Wednesday.
Neither his daughter nor his son Dave Hayer was available for an interview Wednesday. Ms. Hayer Bains, who now runs her father's Punjabi-language newspaper, the Indo Canadian Times, was working to meet a deadline, one of her staff said.