Talk Radio Helps Immigrants Stay Connected with Home
Every Wednesday night, Boubacar Ba goes to a radio production studio in New York City and prepares for his show. The program, called Radio Mali USA, is a show by Malians for Malians around the world.
With a tall glass of water and a few news stories in hand, Ba gets ready for whatever may happen in his conversations with listeners.
“My show, sometimes it goes to three hours, because the taxi drivers, they don’t want it to end.”
In the United States, many immigrants speak in languages that are rarely spoken across the country. So, staying connected to local news and culture can be hard. In many immigrant communities, talk radio programs are designed to fill this need. Such programs offer a brief escape from day-to-day struggles immigrants face, including the ones without legal documents.
Ba is one of the 7,000 world broadcasters that work with Zeno Media. The company offers immigrant populations the chance to stay connected to news from their home countries in their home languages.
Baruch Herzfeld is the founder and president of Zeno Media. He says its programs are designed for immigrants whose jobs require them to spend a lot of time alone.
"If I was a security guard in a building, and I didn’t have that much human interaction, I was thinking, ‘What can I provide to this person to entertain them or to make their day better?’"
Boubacar Ba became a political news broadcaster in 2009. He says news from Mali is most important for his listeners. Second are U.S. immigration issues.
