In radio in Ireland, the “accent ceiling” persists

An announcer with an Irish accent says the next show is presented by “Hussain Bakhshi, who is originally from Afghanistan, but is now living in Ireland”.

A soft voice with a different twang is next.

“Hello everyone, welcome to Home for All, with me, Hussain Bakhshi, and I would like to say for you, Happy Nowruz today and Eid Mubarak,” he said on a 22 March show.

He then introduced his guest, Genia Mahato. “Welcome to our show, Dear Genia.”

Until recently, Hussain Bakhshi would commute every week to Ballyfermot Civic Centre to record a show for Together FM, a community radio station serving west Dublin.

He still does the show, but pre-records a few episodes each month to run week by week because it takes him an hour by bus to get there, said Bakhshi, recently, sitting at a city centre café.

Bakhshi has a full-time job. He volunteers on the radio show in his spare time.

He’s not new to broadcasting, though. In Afghanistan, he worked in the media for years. In 2015, he set up an education centre, where he taught kids how to present and speak eloquently in public. “And continued until 2023,” said Bakhshi.

Then, about two years into the Taliban’s recovery of power, Bakhshi moved to Ireland. 

Volunteer-run community radio stations are the most likely places to hear differently accented voices presenting their own shows, said Brian Greene, chair of Community Radio Ireland (CRAOL).

“It’s the same glass ceiling that women have had breaking into the male-dominated broadcasting,” he said.

Over in Cork, Fahmeda Naheed, who was born in Pakistan, has been presenting her own chat show on Cork city community radio for the past three years, she said.

At the moment, there are a few presenters on national public radio who have immigrant parents or moved here as kids with their family, but it’s harder to come by programmes presented by people with varied accents. 

Both Bakhshi and Naheed say they have thought about the idea that their accent might not be seen as the right one for horizons beyond community radio.

But from his perspective, Bakhshi said, accent shouldn't be an issue as long as you speak clearly. Besides, he said, everyone has an accent, right?

“Even Irish people themselves or American people, one part of the country speaks in one way, the other part, another way,” he said.

Greene, chair of CRAOL, said in his view, national radio can still snub people born here who don’t have a cut-glass south Dublin lilt, let alone people with accents from different countries. 

A spokesperson for RTÉ said in response to an interview request about the national public broadcaster’s perspective on the issue that it was looking to arrange one, but couldn’t fulfil it in time. 

Tune into 87.5 FM

When driving on the M50 or any road in or around Dublin, said Greene, tune into 87.5 FM.

“There’s no channel on 87.5. It’s just static,” he said.

But if you listen carefully, it gradually picks up a parade of sounds from other cars’ radios, each wafting in the air for a few seconds as the cars slide out of view, Greene said.

The voices are revelatory, he said, showing just how many people around us are listening to radio shows and podcasts in different tongues.

“You hear a kaleidoscope of different sounds musically and in accents. The variety that you get there is astounding,” he said.

For Greene, he said, that serves as proof of just how crucial it is for national public radio to broadcast voices that speak with accents that lots of other Dubliners have. 

Almost one in five people living in Dublin were born outside of Ireland and the United Kingdom, said the 2022 census results. 

Now I see me

Part of the reluctance to hire people with diverse voices might be fears that listeners might push back and complain, said Greene.

And that can be true, he said – it happens.

That’s why people who don’t exactly have what's perceived to be the standard radio voice gradually shed their real accents and cultivate a D4 one, he said.

He watched that happen to a former college friend, said Greene.

“There’s a culture in broadcasting that there is a perceived acceptable standard voice,” Greene said.

And that can exclude out-of-towners in Dublin and working-class Dubliners, he said.

This is also an issue in the United States.

In her book Listeners Like Who?: Exclusion and Resistance in the Public Radio Industry, Laura Garbes, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, also found that listeners’ negative feedback played a role in shaping access to broadcasting jobs in the United States.

Audiences who are accustomed to hearing a standard, implicitly White, radio voice consider accents that aren’t like that to be unintelligible, her research says.  

Her study gives voice to Arvand, a Middle-Eastern American broadcaster who was weirded out by how the voices of people with different accents sounded clear to him but not to his White colleagues.

“People will still openly say, ‘We can’t have that person on. Their accent is just too much.’ And then you go and listen, and you’re like, ‘What are you talking about?’ I understand everything they’re saying,” Arvand had said.  

Garbes wrote that in the course of her research, public radio workers of colour consistently told her that “the distinct public radio sound was unmistakably white. When I asked them to elaborate, I would sometimes get sonic descriptions, like a ‘nasally thin sound’”.

Mainstream radio tries to cater to “the comforts and tastes of predominantly white, professional-class listener-members”, said her study.

The study mentions a Black broadcaster, Devin, who said he was caught off guard and grew self-conscious about his voice when listeners emailed feedback, saying they couldn’t understand him.

It chronicles his frustration and the resentment he began to nurse.

At one point, the study says, he’d thought, “Fuck this, I’m not doing these radio hits to get the grief from white people who I don’t even want to talk to in the first place”.

Devin hid his real voice over time, Garbes wrote. “It might be beneficial to me in some immediate career ways – and also a little bothersome in terms of my self-conception,” she quotes him as saying.

Hear me out

Naheed, the presenter in Cork city’s community radio, said that when people say they don’t understand accents like hers, it is “largely about familiarity rather than actual understanding”. 

“What is perceived as unintelligible is influenced by exposure and listener expectations,” she said.

That’s why it’s so important to normalise different accents by playing them on airwaves more often, so listeners grow accustomed, she said.

On a video call on Monday, Garbes, whose research grappled with the exclusion of different accents from the radio, said low exposure is a factor, but editors can also project their personal preference onto the audience. 

“A lot of White editors would say, ‘Oh, our audience won’t like that. Our audience won’t understand that,” she said.

But is that really true? Garbes asked. 

Naheed, the presenter in Cork, said that on community radio, her accent has never been a barrier.

“I have interviewed a wide range of guests, many of them Irish, and the engagement has always been strong,” she said.

Where we live is our country 

There can be a disparity between the level of acceptance for varied accents, too, said Garbes, at the University of Minnesota. 

“If someone has a French accent, for example, it is sort of associated in people’s understanding, in their racial linguistics hierarchy as being associated with high culture, associated with intelligence, with expertise,” said Garbes. 

Investing more in public radio and a real commitment to plurality of voices is the solution, she said.

Greene, of CRAOL, said something similar. Real plurality is why people with all kinds of accents find their voice in community radio, he said.

It’s by the community for the community, Greene said.

Bakhshi, the presenter at Together FM, said being on the radio is not just a way for him to keep in touch with people in real life – “I love to be connected” – but also helps him melt in and grow his network, he said. “In Afghanistan, I had a very wide connection.”

He’s learned from his guests’ tales of hardships and triumphs on the radio show, said Bakhshi, who won a community radio achievement award last year.

That’s been enriching, Bakhshi said.

It's important for other immigrants to hear accents like theirs on the radio, feel counted and maybe grow the confidence to try it themselves, he said.“They would be encouraged.”

Public national radio stations probably have wonderful notions of inclusivity on paper, and it would be good to see them in action, he said.

“If they have the policy and they act accordingly, then I can see myself there as well.”