Media must know where to stop

The only son and daughter of a member of the journalist community hanged themselves recently. They lived with a single parent, their mother. Their father too is in the journalism profession and the couple had opted for a divorce. The man left Bangladesh with an assignment for China. How daunting it is for a single mother to bring up two adolescent children! She was doing all she could to make her daughter and son happy. And yet the unthinkable happened. Her universe suddenly fell apart. The day she came back home to discover the bodies of the love of her life hanging, her world spun all around her. How traumatised she might have been is difficult to fathom!
When the mother has lost all meanings of life, there comes another blow from the community she belongs to. A section of the press has been manufacturing scandalous stories. Yellow journalism was at its cruellest. A bereaved mother like her alone knows how unbearable the shock is. Her son was a meritorious student who passed the O Level with star marks in four subjects. The rumour machine of yellow journalism is churning out all kinds of fictitious stories unaware that this is unethical and disrespect for the dead. More than that these are causing the woman anguish she is unable to take in any more. She is barely alive now after what has happened to her.
Above everything else, she is a mother and this identity is more important than her career as a journalist. And yet, allegations have it that a section of the media is mercilessly going about assassinating her character. Is this because she is a woman? At a time when she has been struggling to take each breath, some members of the community have found her a soft target for their attack. There are bands of reporters who are out to make a mountain out of mole-hills. In fact, they could not care less about authenticity and verification of facts. Slanting news with scandalous insinuation is presented in order to make it appealing to the readers.
What has exactly prompted the brother and sister to commit suicide is not a matter of conjecture. If it is a consequence of the divorce between their mother and father, why blame the mother alone? At least she took the responsibility of her children. The father walked on them and has reportedly married another woman. If that is the case, it surely is an injustice to accuse the mother. It is not unlikely for sensitive boys and girls to act impulsively at the shock of separation or divorce between father and mother. But this does in no way invite someone to conclude that the boy and girl were drug addicts.
Indeed, in cases involving teenaged boys and girls, some uninitiated people in the journalistic profession demonstrate an extra bit of enthusiasm. Perhaps they do so to entertain readers. What they forget though is that every word they utter or write should factually be correct. When such incidents occur at the lower rung of society, no one comes forward to contest the contention of the story. But in this case, fortunately a large number of fellow journalists have found the slanderous news unacceptable. They have protested the consistent attempt to feed the media with scandalous news.
The flame of the woman journalist's eyes has gone out with the death of her daughter and son. She is now a living dead. An act of indiscretion on the part of her fellow professionals will simply make her dead twice over. So, please spare a bereaved mother who now needs care and comfort from all including her community.