Bangladesh media suffers from an odd sense of identity crisis. The tabloid media and the mainstream media look largely the same. While the mainstream may be doing less click baiting, the tabloids do it as much as possible, for both a matter of survival now. In the end, both are closer than what mainstream would like to be. The search for differentiated content has become a crisis.
One reason could be that the total news items are probably lesser than the total number of media outlets in town. No one with surety can say how many there are exactly. News is churned out by media workers that are often based on social media content. But even though social media, despite its endless variety can only provide so much news and journalists who cover events are basically doing so sitting at the desk, the news variety is limited and so is the treatment.
Bangladeshis are used to seeing media as adjunct political workers, that is they will follow political lines and uphold one party’s cause or another. This is the colonial legacy when media workers were also freedom fighters and so on. After 1947, this tradition continued grandly and journalists doubled as pushers of the national cause. Hence the journalist and the politicians became interchangeable identity and that tradition was more established after the Pak army action in 1971.
After 1971, this tradition continued and there have been many cases where political roles were focused both by professionals and by the consumers. It became the critical indicator. Political reporting and editing are partisan and don’t require much creativity or even hard work but can gain followers because it’s political. The result is that the media over time has become lazy. But now that is causing a crisis.
Low politics, high corona
For the last few years, the Opposition party failed to mount any significant movement of strength making it less and less significant. As their citadels fell one after another and without much contest, political activities nosedived. Thus depletion of the political sector as a whole became a factor which failed to generate much news. Public interest therefore grew less and less and the media had to resort to sensational news making to fill up the gaps left by the lack of political news.
Second was corona which also killed political news and an unprepared media workforce just kept on repeating numbers in which public interest soon declined. This led to more of the same.
Finally, social media began to do what media had done before, providing sensational, partisan and high voltage news and views including political ones which satisfied various consumer segments.
All these factors together have created a situation in which mainstream and tabloid media are both scrambling for viewers and readers. As IP TV grows but will face the same crisis, it’s time to observe if media in general can make it through the transition as a whole, now knowing where it’s going in the end.
Source: United News of Bangladesh