The "real picture"

I've been following The Bangladesh Journal (www.bangladeshjournal.com) for a while now, and its interesting to see that there is finally a concerted effort to present the "other side" of "the story".

For a few years now, the news from Bangladesh that is available online has been quite one-sided, with publications such as The Daily Star, Prothom Alo, Janakantha, Ajker Kagoj and Bhorar Kagoj providing the bulk of the daily news. I say they are one-sided because they are quite anti-government, are center or left of center in their views, and frequently draw the ire of the BNP-JI government.

True, there is the Inquilab and the Sangram that are mainstream dailies with online editions that have views on the right of center, but the former's reporting reads more like a tabloid and the latter suffers frequent outages and poor bandwidth. There are a few smaller ones like Amaar Desh and Naya Digonto but they are too new to have made a mark yet.

In contrast, The Bangladesh Journal seems to be a publication that is solely online, is well-written and caters sensibly to the latters' point of view. It's not that this is obvious only from the articles and the issues they tend to focus on.

Take a look at the links to online newspapers on the right.

All the bigger newspapers are lower down the order, whether they be they be in English or Bangla. On the other hand, all pro-government publications make it to the top of the list, even though the standard of the news and the breadth of issues touched are paltry for some of them compared to the others. I would love to hear someone give me another reason for this ranking, but for now, the only explanation I can find is the bigger dailies suffer from a perceived anti-government bias.

Why this bias? Thankfully, The Bangladesh Journal doesn't leave that question unanswered. The "About Us" section tells us that "The Bangladesh Journal was founded in 2004 as an effort to distribute Bangladesh's true picture around the world."

The "true picture" - hah!

See, it's the whole propaganda thing again - I guess this is the response that someone has come up with to the "conspiracy" that this international consortium has hatched against Bangladesh... Unfortunately, this desire to present a "true picture" effuses a level of bias that I find disturbing. I don't doubt the creators of this site believe they are presenting the "true picture", but I wonder if they've ever asked themselves how "true" a picture can be if one looks at it using filters in the first place.

Mind you, its a good thing that this publication, and similar like-minded ones are coming up. Both sides of the media can be stubbornly one-sided and even paranoid, but it's useful to see both sides engage in one-sidedness and paranoia.

Who knows, between the two, the spin might just cancel out to reveal the "real picture"!

>>>: )