When a person sits down to watch TV, and especially news, he expects the TV channels will broadcast the most important news in the beginning. I was astounded and then stunned by a, very famous channel, which started its bulletin by first giving news of cricket and then the IPL umpire’s spot fixing and after all this gave the news of the death of 18 children burnt alive in a school van! Have we as a nation, lost all sense of priority, or is this channel so insensitive that the death of 16 children has less importance than cricket? With so many deaths every day, they may have become insensitive to such news?
Turning to BBC and CNN I kept watching the news update on one man’s death, Lee Rigby in UK, the whole nation was up in arms and the TV channels showed so many angles of his life and death. I can understand that our channels are commercialized, but does death not sell any more? Do we need even worse incidents for someone to raise a voice? Morning shows are filled with useless chats wedding shows and the dark side of magic and ‘Pir’ or black magic, while 16 children burnt to death! No one rushed to the location to ask what went on, the news channels showed the burnt van and crying relatives and then they announced that some useless inquiry will take place, and we all go back to our daily lives.
Is that all that is done when 22 people burn to death in a building or 18 children are burnt alive in a van? Is this how civilized nations act? Are we even humans and as far as Islam goes, let’s not even mention religion, when we compromise the lives of innocent people for a few rupees!
NAEEM SADIQ,
Lahore, May 25.