The New Nation - Internet Edition

Maswood Alam Khan

Suppose all the millions of viewers of dozens of television channels and all the innumerable readers of hundreds of newspapers are all batsmen and all the media people are bowlers in an elaborate cricket game. If you are an experienced and learned batsman you know how to face a slow bowler who, by placing a spin on the ball he bowls, causes the ball to deviate left or right from the grassed pitch. But not all batsmen---I mean, not all Bangladeshi television viewers and newspaper readers---are as intelligent and dexterous as you are.

There was a time in the ancient era when social and religious leaders, like magicians, did influence people, who would not easily believe words of mouth, by showing their hitherto supernatural powers that were actually derived from scientific inventions and discoveries. A page full of printed words was a supernatural message to ancient people. Leaders reinforced their words of mouth in prints pressed on pages. Within a few years of the invention of the printing press people who relied on only hearsays started relying on a different medium: the famous print medium. Newspapers, magazines, and books thus became magic wands and leaders whose messages were printed on those print media became wizards, chiefs and holy men.

Coins made of gold and silver were reliable media for transacting goods and services. Materials printed on pages became so trustworthy that people didn't object to replacing metallic coins with paper currencies which were neatly printed by pressmen. Till today people don't trust a government's order duly signed unless the order is printed on the gazette that comes out from a government-controlled printing press. A handwritten divine book like the Holy Koran will not be accepted by a devout Muslim as reliable as one that comes in a precisely printed format with embroidered pages ensconced in a leather-bound cover. "Pressmen cannot print anything false" is a conviction cemented in our psyche. Pressmen have thus traditionally become the most trustworthy people in our society.

There is no denying the fact that our entire system of governance has been corrupted by our greed, lack of ethics, intellectual dishonesty and above all by the attitude of our past leaders. We clap our eyes on an organisation, public or private, and we find only corrupt people busy seeking their fortune through iniquitous practices. Corruption has become an industry in our society. Tentacles of the corrupt have spread so widely and have coiled around every vital institution so tightly that a democratically elected government's law enforcement machinery in spite of putting Herculean labors and efforts cannot alone free our society from the curse unless our pressmen remain vigilant as watchdogs and our citizens are fairly educated by fearless and unbiased pressmen.

Our nation a few years back first in 2000 earned the championship as 'the corrupt nation number one' in the whole world. In the global race of corruption we have gradually lagged behind not for the reason that voluntarily we have gradually chosen righteous livelihood shunning the corrupt paths. I believe, the main reason behind our being gradually lesser corrupt is our fear of getting exposed to the press.

Corrupt people in our country are not so much afraid of law enforcement agencies as they are scared of the community of pressmen who are also known as journalists. Starting from adulteration down to terrorism whatever scourged our society would have been more rampant to make our life unimaginably hellish had there been no vigil press to guard us. Whatever improvements we have achieved in the governance of Bangladesh would not have been accomplished only by clamour of our politicians or screams of our reformists if their screaming and clamour were not made louder by our journalists.

In desperation we rush first to a police station to lodge a complaint. When police don't answer we rush to a court of law. When a court of law doesn't respond promptly we go to a press club---our last resort---to ventilate our frustrations. Journalists hear our story and flash our disappointments in their media. Solaced by the coverage of our plights in the press we smile with relief even though our plights don't disappear immediately.

But there are questions that are gnawing our conscience! Are the members of our press clubs steadfast in not printing anything false or prejudiced? Are the journalists nonpartisan? Are the present laws framed sufficiently powerful to punish an intellectual who will be found indulging in a pursuit that may directly or indirectly corrupt a learner's mind? Is press freedom in our country unbridled?

Are journalists dependable educators of the masses who form their opinions about the state of affairs only through reading the printed words in newspapers? Are our intellectually powerful journalists our watchdogs to sniff out injustices being perpetuated on the weak and the poor? Is there any watchdog overseeing our intellectual watchdogs?

Have we ever found a single intellectually famous journalist or an author who was ever awarded by a court of law a heavy punishment for his fabricating news or views with a biased political goal in view? If yes, was the sentence of the heavy punishment kept upheld by the highest court of law?

In the civilian sector in Bangladesh both print and electronic media now enjoy the highest esteem. Journalists in our society are deemed most respectful, and also powerful. A traffic police constable on duty doesn't care much if a car carrying a justice with a supreme court ensign fluttering passes by; but he becomes frantic to help a car pass by if there is a genuine (or fake) sticker with the word "Shangbadik" pasted on the car's windowpane.

Media hold the absolute power to mould our public opinion. But buoyed by power, prestige, and respect not all journalists do really exhibit a measure of humility people expect from a commanding person. Excessive power and prestige seem to have corrupted a few of our pressmen, if not many, when we find some of them frequenting corridors of power not for any journalistic pursuit but for lobbying for something else.

Absolute power seems to have corrupted some of them quite absolutely when we find their strokes of pen painting something absolutely white into a diametrically opposite thing absolutely black. We cannot expect a fair guardianship from these errant pressmen.

English historian and moralist Lord Acton rightly said: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Paraphrasing Lord Acton another English politician William Pitt said: "Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it."

Mass media may become deadlier than street terrorists if media people launch intellectual viral attacks on the readers and viewers. Intellectual viruses are not legible in print media nor are they visible in electronic media. There are a hundred and one ways intellectual viruses may be unleashed by media to penetrate into cerebrums of gullible readers and viewers. General masses who are deeply wedded to their traditional ways of believing what they see in prints and in videos will never realize how the media barons-or in other words the intellectual terrorists---using their super-fast digital methodology have impregnated into their minds seeds of falsity.

There is in fact no effective organisation in our country which can really whip a journalist if s/he deviates from his/her ideal pathway.

Neither are many very brave people in our society who can pluck enough courage to fight with a journalist in a court of law. Nor are there smart intellectuals in our society who are endeavouring to devise out an effective intellectual antivirus pill that we the gullible readers and viewers can gulp before unfurling a newspaper or tuning in to a television channel.

Tragically 99 percent of the so-called literate people, who can simply read a newspaper, and 90 percent of the educated people, who got some college or university degrees, are simpletons; they believe what is printed on a newspaper and they trust all the words heard in a television talk-show that is intelligently organized with two sets of people expressing views from two opposing platforms. They can't imagine that intellectuals participating in a talk-show and pressmen conducting those shows may also be critically biased. These simpletons, who are sometimes ridiculed as clods or dolts, can easily be tricked by any biased journalism if the media guy or any big brother behind the screen is smart.

"Taakey chokhey dekhini, taar baashi shonesi" (I haven't seen him yet; I have only heard the tone of the flutist) is the opening line of a Tagore song which is true to describe a simpleton's conviction about a fact he develops through rumors or hearsays. But when he reads about the same hearsays on the front page of a popular newspaper or when he views the same story in a television channel his perceived conviction is permanently cemented; he will never know the real fact if the story were rumor-based and if the story is later proven fabricated in a court of law or in a subsequent television talk-show. He may not notice the correction if the story is regretted through a corrigendum printed in very small fonts and in a very remote corner on an inner page of the newspaper that first flashed the story in bold fonts on its front page under a banner headline.

God saved that most of our journalists are honest in discharging their professional duties though I am not pretty sure whether at this moment I am eulogizing their intellectual honesty out of fear or with a view to flattering them as I am soliciting their kind consideration to publish in their esteemed newspapers this write-up ventilating my reservations against some of their colleagues.

But it is a fact that before sending a write-up to a particular newspaper a writer has to modulate his article in accordance with what political philosophy the newspaper subscribes to. Very famous newspapers of our country may not publish your words if you are extraordinarily brave to 'call a spade a spade'; but the same newspapers will splash their prime pages with your ideas that tune in to their philosophy even if you prevaricate and 'call a shovel an e-tool'.