Assistant Professor
Since Saturday midnight, Facebook feeds have been flooded with the image of an enchanting face bearing a soft smile reminiscent of the Mona Lisa. The photo, in black and white, feels strangely appropriate as an epitaph of life.
There is a strange connection between Bangladesh’s media reform process and governments lacking democracy. Before the establishment of government through universal suffrage in undivided Pakistan
August 29, 1971. It was around midnight. There was a terrified silence in the city of Dhaka under the tight security of the Pakistani occupation forces. On that day, Shafi Imam Rumi returned home just after evening. He told his mother that his friend, guerrilla fighter Hafiz, would be staying the night. The darkness of night was deepening. In his younger brother Jami’s room, the radio was on. Suddenly the airwaves rang out with the song “Ekbar bidaay de ma ghure asi…”. Rumi was startled. He thought—why has this song been played several times today? Surely some accident has happened somewhere. With heavy hearts, everyone went to sleep—father Sharif Imam, mother Jahanara Imam, younger brother Jami, Rumi and a few others.
Some death news envelops people like a dense, cold fog. Some death news makes the rhythm of breathing longer and heavier. Some death news gathers steam inside the chest and truly makes it heavier. The news of journalist Bibhoranjan’s death felt much like this for Bangladeshi journalists. On Friday evening, before hearing the news of the death of this accomplished journalist, I was carefully reading his last ‘open letter’. In that letter, he laid bare a cruel picture of Bangladesh’s journalism. At the farewell of ending his life, he pointed out with his finger at how this world is full of brotherhood illusions, hollow, over-emotional, and unprofessional. Where, bit by bit, the lives of many journalists are being destroyed.
One of the indispensable elements of war is propaganda. War means terrorising with information, distorting information. War means the constant attempt to occupy the psyche with distorted and false information. War means the battle of forgetfulness against memory. In the twentieth century, Hitler’s Propaganda Ministry (Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda), headed by Joseph Goebbels, set an extraordinary precedent in war propaganda. His central philosophy was: If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
George Orwell, the author of the world-renowned dystopian novel 1984, which deals with surveillance, fictional injustice, and authoritarianism, also expressed timeless views on journalism. One of them is: “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.” And truly so—the journalist’s job is to expose suppressed information, matters of public importance, and secret activities. The aim of journalism is to speak out against injustice, inconsistencies, and corruption. A journalist's mission is to act as an observer and protect people from being deceived and deprived. But questioning those in power, high-ranking officials, members of various forces, and people involved in crimes is a difficult task.