The National Ethnic and Multicultural Broadcasters’ Council (NEMBC) is the peak organisation representing ethnic community broadcasters across Australia. The NEMBC contributes to media diversity by maintaining and connecting people to their language, culture and identity. The NEMBC has been doing this for forty years.
Ethnic community broadcasting is an incredibly diverse sector, serving the needs of hundreds of thousands of Australians of all ages in urban and regional areas right across the country. It is also highly cost-effective, harnessing the skills, expertise and time of more than 4000 volunteers from 125 distinct cultural groups who create over 2,000 hours of content every week in over 100 languages which are broadcast via 90 community radio stations. Federal government funding plays a highly important role in catalysing and building the capacity of this voluntary sector.
The news service
This MNN site provides free access to our news scripts for our NEMBC MEDIA news members. The scripts are written using plain English for easy translation and production for multicultural radio programs. The purpose of the MNN is to provide news to culturally and linguistically diverse communities to assist them to make informed decisions and be active citizens.
News stories are especially selected and written to be non-sensational, focuses on issues not personalities, to explain and unpack issues, to inform and help build a socially cohesive and inclusive Australian society.
Our news history
The NEMBC multilingual news service started in early 2020 and led to the creation of four multilingual news services dedicated to improving in-language news bulletins to culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities.
The NEMBC established the multilingual news service as a radio audio news service about COVID-19 to ensure there was a consistent flow of reliable information for multicultural communities in many different languages so they can make informed decisions about the pandemic to make a safer and more secure Australian society during the crisis.
NATIONAL
The National MNS commenced in May 2020 and within a month there were over 170 news bulletins being played a week in 7 languages across Australia at 29 radio stations.
VICTORIA
When the second outbreak occurred in Melbourne the NEMBC received support from the Victorian Government, in September 2020, and started producing daily news bulletins for Victoria.
The daily news in Victoria is broadcast on community radio stations 75 times a week in Victoria and across 12 radio stations.
NSW
In January 2022, the NEMBC began working with the New South Wales Government to produce yet another MNS consisting of daily news, explainers, animation & audiograms that provided reliable COVID-19 information for CALD communities.
The Multilingual National News (MNN) started in March 2022 and has developed in this specialised news wire service.
Funding and Support
The Multilingual National News (MNN) service Facebook Meta Walkley Foundation Journalism Grant
Multilingual News Service Victoria – Victorian Government Multilingual News Service NSW – New South Wales government.
The initial National Multilingual News Service service was start-up funding by the NEMBC.
This news service would not be possible without the foundational support of the Community Broadcasting Foundation (CBF)