Media Calls

One of my regular tasks during my time at Go Communications was to complete media calls on behalf of the Vertical team. These calls usually were to query whether certain media outlets would publish an article or attend an event, etc. Through previous internships and various administration jobs I had quite a lot experience with phoning clients and the media and felt confident with my phone etiquette and manner, thus I was confident I would be able to successfully manage phoning the Malaysian Media outlets on behalf of Vertical.

Although I had only been in Malaysia for a short period of time everyone that I had met and spoke perfect English. My confidence soon evaporated however, as many recipients of my calls were not fluent in English, thus I discovered how fortunate I had been in only meeting Malaysians who spoke fluent English. I realised that although my previous experiences had been similar they hadn’t required the same amount of patience by the receiver of the call.

Malaysia, unlike Australia, has multiple official languages which include Malay, Chinese, Tamil (the language predominantly spoken by Malay Indians), various indigenous languages and Malaysian English. Not all the staff at the media outlets I called spoke English, which resulted on occasion with them becoming very irritated with my lack of multi lingual skills. Completing this task on a regular basis during my time in Malaysia made me realise how lacking in diversity our media outlets in Australia are.

Australia is extremely multicultural, with a diverse range of persons and opinions, however our media, particularly when it comes to traditional media, such as print and TV, doesn’t seem to represent this diversity and instead only caters for the preference of a certain majority. I do acknowledge that this lack of diversity could also be related to a difference in populations, however I still feel that we are somewhat missing out by not embracing the various other cultures who co-habit Australia.  

The diverse range in media organisations in Malaysia also has resulted in consultancies like Go Communications having to work really hard and compete for coverage across a diverse range of media outlets. For instance, if Vertical wanted an article to be published within a   Chinese Newspaper, they were expected to translate the article to Mandarin or Cantonese, depending upon the readership.

Although the media calls did become monotonous, on reflection, I realise that I now have become more aware of the differences between the media in Malaysia and Australia, in reference to the demands of diverse cultures within the country and how easy the organisations I interned for in Perth have it in regards to gaining media attention.