UNB Dhaka: Aug-11,

These are very trying times for the media as public interest in usual issues are very low. Politics is gone and most are relieved because they say the same thing. Some politicians are still popular but that’s because they are amusing and make the audience smile loudly. People hardly care who has to say anything about anything.

While activist-journalists care about who rules Bangladesh and “dhandabaz”  ones with whom to line up, for most media workers politics is a source of news. Now that politics is shut, news is shut too. How long can one report what the Opposition leader says about the ruling party’s failure to handle the Corona situation and the response of the ruling party that the Opposition doesn’t know what it's talking about?

Economy never made much news because people are more busy making money or trying to survive than reading about it. As it is, most news is not positive with a corona hit economy so most stay away from reading them. Sometimes there is news but they are largely about people who have committed economic crimes but are now free for one reason or another or economic criminals but there are so many that the public no longer cares. However, a story with pics which show  a criminal leading a fancy life abroad sitting on a sofa in his plush home is a better read than hearing about a group of hyper rich who just got off  police charges as “ its ok now bro.” It happens so often that it’s no longer a crime, hence not news.

Sports and Sex?

Sports news is fun but not opinions. We are nowhere in any sports except cricket, - one of the top 11 in a sport which 15 play- so we want to see and hear about it. The problem is we are only in one sport but the most popular sport is soccer which we play so badly, we don’t want to hear or know about it. So it’s basically international sports and we don’t care about local politics or sports barring cricket.

Which basically leaves “entertainment media '', always full of juicy stuff. And the crowd loves it. As of now we know practically everything about Porimoni and her crowd including gifts of qurbani cows though not enough about their patrons. A newspaper did publish a list of sorts and that led to screaming and jeering and a well-known banker-author was named who has denied any involvement. It was bad media or media desperate for anything about sex and scandals?

So was the Porimoni affair created by the authorities in partnership with the media to save the media industry now in trouble? But Porimoni as a source of news also has limits. So in view of the crisis, may we have Hurmoni please to keep us going when Porimoni ends?

End/Dct/Unb/Sma/