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Dear
Friends,
We
are deeply grieved at the death of more than 600
people due to a ferry capsizing in the Meghna
river in Bangladesh. The incident was reported
in almost all the daily national and regional
newspapers. Some like the Ananda Bazaar Patrika
and Pratidin mentioned it in their headlines,
while others carried it less prominently. The
small but significant point that we would like
to make is not about where or how the news was
carried in the dailies. It is about the nature
of representation of news on a paper which often
plays with the reader's psychology in deciding
the relative importance of events.
While The Statesman carried the item in brief
under another item about Maruti's (a multinational
automobile company) stock reports and the Prime
Minister, Mr Vajpayee's search for a solution
to the Ayodha temple controversy, the Asian Age
carried under Britney Spears' note on her 'virginity'.
Can't
our papers be a little more respectful towards
humanity? Is it always
going to be the commercial aspect that governs
the actions of the opinion makers? Why should
we readers not be given the opportunity to ignore
the farce that goes under the name of 'entertainment'
and the dirty politics that has robbed us of our
brains? We are talking about freeing our minds
from the bonds of fundamental politics which teaches
us to ignore murders and rapes. We are talking
about freeing ourselves from the constraints of
the same old package of 'sexy' entertainment,
which teaches us to look at women as objects and
not as the respected 'other sex' and encourages
us to beat our wives and sisters and mothers!
Don't
you think the representation of news on the front-page
of a daily could
actually be of some help, even if in a very small
way? We feel shocked to see
that the news of investigation of the murder of
a young woman with all the elements of a pornographic
background comes bigger than the breaking news
on the same incident and pictures of celebrities
or models fill the lead pages of almost all the
dailies.
Is it really worth it to appeal to the newspapers
to change? Why the hell
should they care about all these?
Subhajit
Dasbhaumik
Administrative Officer, Drik India
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