By Stephen Linnell
Star Weekly Maribyrnong reporter Benjamin Millar has been named the 2018 winner of the Media Award in Victoria’s Multicultural Awards for Excellence.
The award acknowledges journalists or media organisations that have made an outstanding effort to highlight issues of importance to diverse communities and to contribute to Victorians’ cross-cultural understanding and awareness of diversity.
In awarding the honour, presented at Government House last Wednesday, judges noted that Benjamin had drawn on his experience reporting news in Melbourne’s western suburbs since 2010 to provide “a strong voice of reason” in the media and political narrative surrounding “African gangs”.
The award highlighted his work online and in print to explore the complexities around sensitive issues and to balance all sides of the ongoing debate. The judges said that while Benjamin had not shied from reporting on crime and its victims, he had done so in a way that served as “a turning point” in reporting and the debate.
They called his reporting “an important intervention” that shone new light on the situation and provided voices to the broader multicultural community.
