Did you know that there was a time when Jewish women were among the leading ladies of Bollywood? No, neither did we.

But there was an era when Baghdadi Jewish families who had emigrated to India starred in Bollywood.
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Frustrated by constantly being mistaken for people of other cultures, J. Singh-Sohal decided to take things into his own hands. He decided to make a documentary.

The subject: the Sikh turban, an integral part of his own identity and yet a constant subject of bafflement for others.

The former ITV journalist is making an hour long documentary that will get its initial broadcast next week. It will explore how British attitudes since the terrorist attacks of 7/7 have impacted people who tie turbans.
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The prestigious One World Media Awards – regarded as the ‘Oscars’ of factual broadcasting and journalism – will celebrate its 21st anniversary at this year’s ceremony on Monday 22nd June 2009.

Among nominees for the prestigious Broadcast Journalist of the Year award are Nadene Ghouri, which AIM previously profiled here, and the BBC’s Mukul Devichand.

The 12 award categories recognise excellence in coverage of the developing world.
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Eastenders is planning to spice up the plotline revolving its only Asian / Muslim family with a gay twist.

The BBC soap’s producers said today that the storyline would be a, “traditional love affair, albeit with a modern multicultural twist”.
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A BBC scheme to develop a diverse talent pool of journalists ends next week.

The BBC Journalism Talent Pool is designed to speed the recruitment of journalists by finding and assessing talented people from a range of backgrounds in advance of vacancies.
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The BBC has been criticised for ignoring British Sikhs by an organisation monitoring its output.

The Network of Sikh Organisations says the corporation needed to take “urgent steps” to rectify the problem and ensure it covered all religious communities in Britain fairly.

The group cited two recent instances when Sikhs were excluded from BBC programmes.
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The BBC made its widely expected announcement yesterday that Channel 4 commissioner Aaqil Ahmed had been appointed its new head of religion.

He will become the corporation’s first Muslim to occupy the post, and the second appointee ever from a non-Christian background.

The decision is also likely to trigger a crisis at Channel 4, where he was recently appointed head of multicultural programming. There he had a ringfenced budget of £2 million to commission prime-time programming aimed at a diverse audience.
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The BBC presenter Anita Rani is planning to go undercover to investigate illegal skin-lightening creams available across the UK.

A special documentary was commissioned to take The One Show presenter across the country to ask why many British Asians and Afro-Caribbeans desire lighter skin, and sometimes embrace illegal products to get the desired effect.

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In an extended interview with a newspaper, actress and writer Meera Syal has talked about her first marriage and growing up feeling insecure for the first time.

In an interview with the Daily Mail newspaper she said she found it difficult growing up as an Indian girl in a white, working-class mining village. “I felt isolated as a child because I was different. … I stuck out like a sore thumb.”
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The highly successful Britain’s Got Talent act Signature will join singer Shahin Badar in a brand new comedy show on the BBC on Monday 20th April. They will feature on a show by the Iranian stand-up comedian Omjid Djalili at 10:35pm.

Shahin’s will sing a cover of Bhangra hit ‘nachna onda nai‘, with Signature performing. She is best known for her vocals on the dance hit singles ‘Smack my bitch up’ and ‘Get up get off ‘ by The Prodigy.

by Sunny Hundal
Editor

A couple of weeks ago, the Sunday Telegraph ran a front-page story alleging that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, was worried the appointment of a Muslim as head of religion at the BBC would “sideline” the “Christian voice”. Coincidentally, the Sunday Times ran a remarkably similar story the same day, as did the Daily Mail the following day.

It smacked of a classic media hit-job and I decided to dig deeper. Rowan Williams had met the BBC director-general at a lunch that was nothing out of the ordinary. According to a source at his office, there was no official agenda or any leaks about what was discussed. Since his office is very non-confrontational about such matters, and because nothing is ever denied or confirmed, it presents a perfect opportunity for others to use for their own agenda.

According to many, the Churches’ Media Council kicked off the story. The lobby was on the attack.
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One of the most powerful Asians in British media – Jay Kandola – is to leave her senior position at ITV.

Ms Kandola was the broadcaster’s director of acquisitions, responsible for buying and acquiring American shows for ITV’s network of channels.

She is leaving as part of a general cost-cutting restructuring plan, according to the Media Guardian.
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Baroness Sayeeda Warsi was named the most powerful British Muslim woman last night at an event hosted by the Equalities and Human Rights Comission.

Picking up the award at the Manchester event, the shadow minister for Community Cohesion said: “I personally come from a family of all girls and was brought up to believe that anything was possible and being a Muslim woman should in no way be seen as a barrier but as an asset to achievement.”
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Zara Martin is a television presenter living in London, who fronts a show on the satellite channel Current TV – owned by former American vice-president Al Gore. She tells AIM magazine how she got into the industry.

Which came first? Presenting or modelling? And how?
The modeling I guess. I was doing my degree in Economics and Business studies at UCL in London, and did a few bits of modeling and some commercials on the side. Found it all a bit embarrassing to be honest!

But I always new that I wanted to get into acting and presenting (I did a load of plays and drama classes from a young age) and thought it was a good way to start. So when I finished university I decided to go for it, and off I went to LA!
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Have you had documentary commissions or some other success on Asian and Muslim channels? Are you ready to get onto mainstream TV? Then this opportunity is for you.

The Cineforum on Muslim Women: Visibility and Leadership is a one day film festival and conference on the 30th March 2009 in London. They are offering 10 people the chance to pitch to a panel of commissioners from mainstream broadcast channels.
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A major event held at the end of the month will examine how Muslim women in the UK are doing, and aim to equip media professionals to get ahead in the industry.

Titled ‘Cineforum on Muslim Women: Visibility and Leadership’, the one day event will showcase documentary films, hear from commentators from across the world, feature media industry trainers and debates on a range of issues.

Event director Jobeda Ali told AIM magazine: “We believe that Muslim women’s voices, once mainstreamed, have a particular capacity for creating deep and lasting social change. I came up with this event as an independent venture, just because of my own experiences as a Muslim woman trying to get ahead in a mainstream career.”
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BBC soap Eastenders is introducing another Asian character to its storylines by introducing actress Preeya Kalidas in coming weeks.

She will play Amira, the girlfriend of the Masood family’s eldest son, Syed.
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BBC World’s South Asia staff are going on a strike this week over outsourcing of content to the sub-continent.

Staff members are concerned that the corporation is looking to outsource production of services broadcast in Urdu, Hindi and Nepali to Pakistan, India and Nepal.
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Sky News reporter and presenter Ashish Joshi is quitting the country. Swapping the cold shores of Britain for warmer climes, he is off to head Sky’s new foreign bureau in Dubai.

Plans to open a bureau in the gulf region had been under consideration since early 2008, and Sky News has now confirmed that it will open its doors in mid-late March 2009. Ashish has been named as the new correspondent and will be taking up his new role in March this year.
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The Eastenders Masood family will see another member of the clan join them in May, BBC bosses have revealed.

Marc Elliott (pictured) will play the role of Syed Masood, the “handsome, suave and sophisticated” eldest child of the family.
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In Mumbai and Delhi the number of street beggar kids and the families that survive on handouts now exceeds the entire population of Great Britain.

Now, a one-off Sky1 documentary next week will transport the viewer to Mumbai – the commercial heartbeat of India – to have a deeper look at their way of life.
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What would you give up to be famous? Bad Karma: My Life Through a Lens, follows the struggles of 4 young adults from Southall, West London, desperate to make it big in a dark insight into the entertainment industry.

The series uncovers the lengths an aspiring actress, a film and TV director, a Bollywood Hero, and rapper/comic book artist will go to fulfil their ambitions. Along the way they encounter scandals, blackmail and even murder.
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Star television, a wholly owned subsidiary of News Corporation, announced this week it had appointmented Yeshpal Sharma as its VP for distribution and advertising sales for U.K. and continental Europe.

Yeshpal Sharma joins the broadcaster, which is available on selected Sky packages and Virgin media, from Eurosport where he has served as sponsorship director. Prior to this, he was the business development director for Octagon in the UK.

Many within Asian media were in shock this week when it emerged that 41 year old writer Sharat Sardana died on Tuesday this week.

Known most famously for co-writing sketches for Goodness Gracious Me, Sharat had gone on to set up Gasp Productions along with co-workers Anil Gupta and Ash Atalla.

He also wrote for Kumars at No. 42 and was seen as a leading talent in British comedy.

Meera Syal and Sanjeev Bhaskar released a statement today saying they were “stunned and completely broken hearted about Sharat’s death”.
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BBC newsreader Tasmin Lucia Khan, formerly a Zee TV presenter, gets the Daily Mail treatment today. A Mail on Sunday story remarks on a recent incident where the 28 year old Oxford economics graduate ran short of words while presenting a BBC Three news bulletin.

She started off with a nervous sounding ‘Hi, I’m Tasmin’, but when she followed this with: ‘Here’s a quick reminder of the global news channels’, her enunciation appeared noticeably peculiar, placing unwarranted emphasis on the word ‘quick’, which she stretched out.

She then moved on to the first snippet of news: ‘A missing businessman’s been found alive in a Florida campsite…’ she purred, her voice rising conspicuously at the end of the final word. She managed to end the sentence with ‘…three days after his plane crashed’ – but not before gasping very audibly between the words ‘days’ and ‘after’. The next item never materialised, as she stopped talking altogether. In the seconds that follow, she is heard sighing.

Read the full story here.