Where do you exist inside a newspaper ?

-- Abhinaya Thapa -- 

Do you search about yourself in the daily newspapers among its headlines, columns and even in sports and celebrities chit chat? Do you think about your existence inside its pages? Could it happen or should it be there something about you in different forms and shades in the reportage of the newspapers. What about your desires and wishes and your convictions and did you ever tried to read it in the words of others inside a newspaper? Have you ever read about yourself inside a newspaper?

All this may sound like Christmas wistfulness but as readers for whom do you read. It couldn’t be for reporters and I cannot presume that we read for the publication house. And I haven’t seen people reading for the world. Even for the reading sake we read for ourselves thus something of ourselves must be there. Of me and you and inside the ‘we’ there always remains the differences so I cannot claim on ‘us’ here. Indeed the paper which can incorporate even a little of that ‘us’ turns itself into the good one.

May be I’m wishing a ‘Good one’ for the Christmas gift. But all I need in a newspaper is the queries and queries from readers not the salvation and emancipation. Can I question a newspaper regarding the freedom of expression to express in it? Can we ask or demand the editors through our letters, reactions and request that such and such issue should or could be raised? I’m not implying any mass protest or even a petition but will our requests, reactions and views would be printed at all. I mean within your freedom of expression can you include ours too.

And one can wonder why all this blah, blah regarding freedom of expression and reader’s existentialism only towards Newspaper. What in the case of media forms like TV channels and Radios and indeed I could extend it beyond media and include in it whole curriculum of educational system. It’s in the school and through text books we learn about something and our own. Here the parents should demand analyze and check the school learning process: whether it holds anything about and for their children.

You could hold any institution within the state as responsible to cater your constitutional needs. You could ask radios for certain programs and even music of your taste and surely could ask the police to protect us. And I ‘m writing to newspaper because I have the same right to respond granted through our Interim constitution as every newspapers use it to report on us. Lastly I’m only I’m searching the way we are being expressed in the name of freedom of expression.

I do have a lot grievances but nothing against freedom of expression of any newspapers. Indeed hope and pinning on it I’m writing and wish others will start writing too. After 1990 movement newspapers became one the biggest space for Nepali citizens to comment and express on almost everything. After 2006 April movement there is hardly any sacred or scary things and untouchable subjects upon which one cannot comment or express their views. But are we expressing or writing and creating our own stories and views?

Just look at the entertainment quarters of any newspapers and its reports. Almost all news scooped from international news agencies and hardly any of own artists and programs features on it. Fine, one can be consumer of any products in this globalized world. But what about your views and issues regarding Bollywood, Hollywood and whatever from Europe to China whether it’s politics, revolution or suppression or any books, arts and artifacts. Should we just act like a passive consumer or inane reader? Like every consumers of the world we have our own taste, desires and aspirations. It’s time to explore it and put in on use to judge almost everything.

Posted in: Opinion