The morning and evening bulletins on KBC News seem an unlikely reprieve from a turmoil no child should know, but Friend would tune in like clockwork, if only to catch a glimpse of news anchor Kanze Dena.

"She was a super strong woman," Friend says.

Forced to flee the Democratic Republic of the Congo after her father was killed in war, Friend grew up in Kenya with her four siblings and mother. KBC is Kenya's national broadcast network. 

Though then just five years old, Friend's memories of leaving haven't faded. Sometimes they're hard to explain, she says, "but I still remember what happened".

She also remembers how she felt watching Dena all those years ago, reading the news in Swahili.

Maybe one day she would be that woman on the television screen.

'What are they saying?'

One in four Australians were born overseas, and nearly 20 per cent speak a language other than English at home.

But despite Australia's cultural melting pot, the national media landscape is overwhelmingly white.

Research published by Media Diversity Australia in 2020 found more than 75 per cent of presenters, commentators and reporters had an Anglo-Celtic background, while 77 per cent of respondents with culturally diverse backgrounds believed their backgrounds were a barrier to career progression.

"Candidates with diverse backgrounds are looking at media organisations, going 'well, do I have a role here?' And for a long time the answer was almost a flat no," says Janak Rogers, a journalist and associate lecturer in broadcast journalism at RMIT.

It's a systemic problem in which few industries are immune.

But for those on the other side of the screen, the impact is profound.

In 2015, after a "lonely" childhood in Kenya, Friend and her family were offered a flight to Australia through the UN High Commissioner for Refugees program.

But while in Wodonga they found a place to finally call home, the television — a source of comfort and stability during times of upheaval — suddenly felt inaccessible.

"And I was like, 'I don't really know how to explain that, I want to explain, but sometimes I really cannot'." 

For those settling in a new country, language barriers can create a sense of disconnection from the national discourse.

But across the country, moves are afoot to bridge this divide, by giving communities the power to tell their own stories.

'It was a big challenge to speak on behalf of the community'

A gentle voice comes down the microphone.

"Hello, and welcome to Radio Persia..."

At just 18 years of age, Mahsa has become the voice of Toowoomba's local Afghan community, delivering the news, announcements and more in Dari and English on her weekly radio program.

After migrating from war-torn Afghanistan in 2014, the then 11-year-old was "used to moving to different cities and places" for her parents' work.

And with her teenage years heavily influenced by Australian culture, she found "settling here pretty easy".

But her parents came up against challenges, a scenario facing many older migrants who must often navigate cultural and language barriers in finding work and making friends.

"I think that my parents did their best, but my siblings and I have found it — and friends I have, who are around my age who have settled in a new country, they've found it much easier with language and the cultural barriers," Mahsa says.

One day, while attending the local markets with her family, they were approach by a representative from radio station 102.7 Toowoomba, who wanted to know if they would be interested in contributing to the station's ethnic programs.

"My parents thought that I would be up to it," Mahsa says. "I think I was maybe around 14 or 15 years old, so it was a big challenge to speak on behalf of the whole community.

"But I really worked hard and because I'd attended school for about two years in Afghanistan, I was able to read the language and to read out news articles."

Filling the gap

The importance of Mahsa's role is not lost on her.

While she sees her program as a brief reprieve from the deluge of bad news, she is also conscious of the needs of her community, and the difficulties surrounding settling in a new country.

"For example, the Queensland government found that [language] gap with COVID information, so they put out information and video clips in different languages," she says.

"And this [radio program] is the same thing, except it's covering lots of different news, not just COVID, but lots of different important news information."

The service, supported by the Community Broadcasting Foundation, is about providing a welcoming voice to new arrivals and for others, a way to connect to their culture.

Above all, Mahsa says, she wants to share information that "will make people's lives easier".

"They're things like how you can go about like buying a car or buying a house or getting employment," she says.

"It's about making settling here easier."

'They switch off or they look elsewhere'

While these initiatives provide an importance service, we live in a world "where stories are highly accessible", says Mr Rogers.

And if audiences don't see their communities or their experiences reflected in the mainstream media, "the short answer is, they switch off or they look elsewhere".

"I do think there's a real case now, particularly in Australia, which is self-described as a successful multicultural country, that we make sure that our multicultural stories are wired in to our organisations," he says.

"So that we don't have to have communities looking to other countries and other places to get a sense of feeling represented and having stories that resonate with them."

Successive reports have pointed to a lack of cultural and linguistic diversity in newsrooms, with recommendations including establishing targets to increase cultural diversity, and encouraging organisations to adopt a "diversity mindset".

Mr Rogers, who teaches student journalists, says it's crucial that there are pipelines "for extraordinary young storytellers" coming up through schools and universities, so that they "have allies and create future colleagues within the university system, and people who help open the door for them".

But he says there also needs to be a focus on career opportunities once inside organisations.

"Whether you're put in leadership positions, and also on the flip side, whether you're kind of siloed, where you become the brown person who can only report on brown stuff," Mr Rogers says.

"And I think that's the work, to make sure that people are brought into organisations, that their skills are capitalised on, and their cultural connections and cultural knowledge is drawn upon, but not in a way that puts them in the corner and keeps them there."

'We have this passion to understand what is happening'

While most who know Mahsa expected her to pursue a career in journalism or politics, the 18-year-old has the world of STEM set firmly in her sights.

But while she knows she'll have to hang up the headphones once she begins university, she is confident there will be "someone else who can continue the legacy".

"It doesn't matter, really, who is doing the program as long as there are members of community who are able to continue this forward," she says.

"And then hopefully I can continue the idea of the show through a podcast."

For Friend, who initially struggled to fit in, the support of her family, friends and teachers in Wodonga has been instrumental in pulling her "out of a shell".

"If I was really struggling, I would just stay there quiet," she says.

"And then the more I got used to them, the more they opened me up, the more they taught me, the more they accepted who I was."

She, more than anyone, knows the power of language.

Not everyone understands English, Friend says, "but we have this passion to understand what is happening and what is going on".

It's why she hopes to be a journalist when she finishes high school, so that maybe one day she will proudly read the news in Swahili.

Just like Kanze Dena.