KEY POINTS:
Five years ago I was part of a confrontational meeting with the media. As president of the Singapore Club in Christchurch, I was invited to a meeting of Asian community leaders and journalists from the Christchurch Press to talk about how Asian stories were being reported in the paper.
They had done a series of stories on extortion in the Asian community and had quoted some people who insinuated that there were Triad links to the crime.
I told the chief reporter how I thought the stories were not balanced because views and opinions from Asians were not reflected, and we rubbished the reporter's explanation that she found it difficult to get Asian people to front up on issues.
The claim that mainstream media tries to present balanced reports on ethnic minority stories is often viewed with scepticism and even cynicism by many in those communities.
Last week I found myself on the other side of the fence.
The Chinese Association invited me to talk at a Chinese youth leadership camp about media perceptions of Asians.
Three years of working in the media in New Zealand has opened my eyes to the other side of the coin.
I shared with the 40 at the camp the challenges I face when working on Asian stories: "No comment", "talk to someone else" and "don't use my name" are the three most common responses when I try to interview Asians. And it doesn't only happen with controversial stories.
Once I wanted to get some Asian views on Christmas so I spoke to a cross-section of people. One Chinese woman did not want her photograph taken because she had no makeup on. She said she would email us her photograph. We got the email but the photograph was of a different person. She said she had downloaded a photograph of someone else so readers would think she was prettier.
Short of writing my own opinion piece, it gets a lot harder in presenting an Asian side to a story when it comes to news that is controversial.
Last year, working on a story about the murder of Chinese student Wan Biao for the Herald on Sunday, it was a challenge to speak with Chinese people in Auckland. It wasn't difficult getting them to talk. But it was near impossible convincing them to allow the use of their name in print.
They all agreed there needed to be a Chinese viewpoint to the story but everyone wanted someone else to give that Chinese view.
One community leader at my talk last week said he was one of those who had said no comment when approached by a reporter for the same story.
He reasoned it was because the reporter did not understand that Chinese international students were totally removed from the resident Chinese community, not one and the same.
Surely, I countered, it would be more helpful and in his community's interest to explain that to the reporter rather than choose not to comment.
I suggested he could have helped ensure the reporter did not make the same assumption in the future.
One asked me why reporters do not seek opinions from Asians on general stories that affect all New Zealanders, such as NCEA.
I said one of the reasons could well be because there are hardly any non-Caucasian reporters working in the mainstream newsrooms. And it was only natural for reporters to have a network consisting of people they were comfortable with - usually people of their own ethnicity.
Looking at my own network of newsmakers, I am guilty of that too. Will it get better?
Yes, but only when newsrooms get more Asian reporters. Judging from figures showing that only 0.6 per cent of journalism students in New Zealand are Asian, it is still a long way off.
Another person asked for my honest opinion on whether mainstream newspaper editors truly valued Asian readers.
My answer was yes, and those who didn't would have to in a matter of time. A newspaper is a commercial product, and the Asian market is huge, especially in the Auckland City area where one in four people is Asian.
A Nielsen Media Research national readership survey last year found 70 per cent of people of Asian descent read mainstream papers less than twice a week, despite increases in Asian immigrants from English-speaking countries such as the Philippines, Malaysia and India.
Failure to engage such potential readers risks a future decline in circulation.
It also also puts the newspaper at risk of losing the high ground in being able to call itself mainstream.
The editors know that too, I'm sure.
