Khawaza Main Uddin

It’s dissatisfaction that prompts people to search for more news items using alternative platforms – online and offline. Soothing stories are rarely there for the quarantined masses as the pandemic haunts them all.

These commoners are not also entertained by sales of glamour whatsoever; rather attempts to offer cheap entertainment ignoring society’s mood are deemed obnoxious. Talks of money that suggest needs of individuals and corporate often downplay healthcare emergencies.

The media coverage of Covid-19, as it is worldwide, is obvious but sickening for readers and viewers who constantly get depressing pictures of public health and economy. Presentation of partial reality is another problem. So, the appeal of news as recreation for people in our part of the world is mostly lost.

Thus, journalism is facing one more new challenge of how people need it today, if not why in distant future.

What a person should do to stay away from possible infection of coronavirus, how a low-cost sanitiser can be prepared at home, what kind of food and drink people are required to take to prevent and fight the disease, when they need to call hospital authorities, whom or which organisations they may contact with if necessary and why the poor and vulnerable groups deserve food and cash supports -all such tips and messages were spread fast by individuals on the social media during the early days of the Covid-19 outbreak and lockdown in Bangladesh.

However, the host companies of the social media actors brought people to the focus allowing them their platforms to speak out, to cash in on their faceless number as product for attracting advertising revenue and also determining their conscious choice and taste for buying products and services of relatively more powerful advertisers.

The moment the mainstream media inclusive of newspapers and televisions as well as their online versions, in the West and Asia, came out of their shell to publish a few unconventional stories on do’s and don’ts and features of life, as we noticed during the current crisis, people read and watched them most, as indicated by their sharing on various mediums and platforms.

Despite a broader failure to meet new demands of society, some of the old media have at least retained their relevance to serious people for their authenticity, accuracy and professionalism in presentation of news. Others, many in our country, killed their own credibility, let alone capturing new generation of readers.

Still, people want to know from the media breaking news with confirmation, official announcements, formal events, developments, analyses, truth dug out through investigation, reports on life, lifestyle, living and livelihoods, and so on. While there is no dearth of curiosity to know, knowing has been a matter of daily necessity and people’s quest for finding a sense of direction, though in a divisive manner.

The Covid-19 fallout has exposed some aspects of journalism being pursued over the decades and its monetisation formulas. Already, the media industry and profession were challenged by technology, crisis with advertisement, giant corporate fight, political manipulation and surveillance by powerful state machinery all over the world.

Some of us may hope that reading and carrying printed newspaper would revert to the practice as it was, once the crisis is over. This kind of views bears certain amount of insanity of “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result” as defined by Albert Einstein.

Developing news contents that can attract and engage people generating useful knowledge is perhaps going to be the trickiest task for journalists in the post-Covid-19 period. We see words of emphasis on transition but they lack novelty, uniqueness and originality of thinking.

Journalism will still be relevant to people if it tells them their stories. But any cliché approach to acting just on behalf of the people won’t work. Maybe next time, the readers and viewers would even judge human quality of journalists, apart from unseen creative mind, without being unquestionably loyal to their storytelling.