Our media yet to deliver

It has been more than a decade that I had been writing columns for a few of the leading dailies of the country in English. By and large I have enjoyed my association with the print media. There are reasons for it; both the readers and the media gurus are to blame. Dailies love to print what goes down well with the public. You see the trouble with us is that even moderately educated people of this country often have such closed minds that one cannot but wonder. The media today, in general, for all practical purposes have turned out to be just like any other enterprises of the country. It is basically engaged in earning profits for their owners, besides being friendly with the powers that be. Just like our intellectual community, our media for all practical purposes are engaged in playing it safe and continue to be in "circulation". Frankly while there has been a phenomenal increase in the number of daily newspapers published in Bangladesh, it must be said that there has been little qualitative improvement by way of news dissemination or otherwise. The number of the dailies published in Bangladesh may perhaps be the highest in the region. Many of us have often felt that our print media are fiercely partisan both in its selection of newsworthy issues or otherwise. It is our impression that those who steer and guide our media are more into personal image-building exercises than anything else. They care for the people only to the extent it is essential. There is also much to be said about the news selection by our dailies and subsequent prioritization. Often newsworthy issues are printed in some remote corners of the inner pages while a lesser one is printed as a lead item. The result, many issues of public interests escape the readers' attention. Most dailies these days are highly opinionated with less and less of news and information, plain and simple. We often hear about gagging of the media by the establishment but one wonders as to how free and democratic are those who control and manage our media world. Most of them appear to be more into fattening the purse of their owners through procuring advertisements for the respective dailies, although part of it may be unavoidable but when a daily becomes heavily engaged in such exercises, it is bound to end in compromising the quality of its content. There is this other aspect about our media; many of our dailies are published as protective pads for its publishers-cum-owners. Sometimes, a daily is published to counter the name, fame and views of yet another daily in circulation. This is often done in rather an unorthodox and unconventional way. This, in turn, becomes a daily that merely generates a kind of curiosity in the minds of the people, losing its intrinsic value as a news disseminator. If one were to measure the value and success of our media by the number of the dailies published, it will be a mistake. Our media is yet to become a peoples' media. Besides, it has not been able to guide the nation in any tangible way since our liberation war. Most dailies have one agenda or the other except one that could be described as peoples' issue. A daily today toes the line of the ruling party or the opposition while there are those which indulge in so-called balancing acts in order to appear as neutral and independent. Ever since our struggle for independence, the media has lost their character in more ways than one. We still remember with nostalgia and respect the role played by them during those days of our struggle running up to the liberation war. Although times are different but the fact remains that there are many critical issues facing the nation today that are actually impeding our progress as a developing state in the modern-day world. Our vision, if anything, has become narrower. We have lost direction as a nation. We are more into ceremonies than the spirit or the intrinsic value of an issue or a matter. Our morality and ethics have undergone changes for the worst. These are some of the issues that the media should deal with greater honesty and commitment, a task easier said than done but surely not impossible. Today, it takes no more than ten minutes for a serious reader to go through a daily newspaper, simply because he or she does not find anything worth reading and hence simply scans through. One of the key problems in the management of the country is its poor leadership. It is no different with the media, too. Editors of some of our key dailies are more into politics than into journalistic pursuits. They often spend considerable time walking on the corridors of power. What we really need today is a Manik Mia, or a Zohoor Hossain Chowdhury or an S.M. Ali who would not only be clean of heart and mind but also use his pen against misrule, all kinds of repression against women and above all call a spade, a spade, no matter what. Is that likely to happen any time soon or ever? (The writer can be reached at e-mail: chowdhury.shamsher@yahoo.com)