About a five-minute walk away from Mansfield station in Massachusetts lies an old structure. It is a church, at least on the outside. The cross on the top looks dismembered with just one beam pointing upwards, the horizontal shaft is missing. But the cross at the back is still intact. A small board on the wall identifies it as Al-Noor Academy. A tiny green-colored flag with Arabic letters on it peeps out of one of the windows on the side of the building. A crescent moon, which looks out of place and context, stands at the top of the entrance. There are no minarets, no pronounced external symbols. There is nothing that can tell a passerby that this is an Islamic school.
I came to this small town in New England looking for terrorism. I stand outside, stare at the simple red-brick building, circle the structure, alert, looking for something, trying to hear something that will show me if terrorism is indeed being taught here. The idea itself is elusive. It is anything, a sound, a map where Israel does not exist, or a phrase in a textbook calling for Jihad. May be it is formless, just an idea that echoes within the school’s walls.
Inside the building it is different. On the cream-colored walls hang numerous posters, frames and drawings. There is a consistency in this variety, something that ties it all. One idea that casts its hue on the blue, green and red of the drawings, most of which have been done by students. All have Arabic letters on them. They are there on the blue sky with a silver moon, shining down on a navy river. They squeeze themselves in the concentric rings of a multi-colored chakra, a Buddhist symbol. The kaba or the black stone of Mecca in rich velvet hangs at the end of the corridor. It is difficult to not see it.
Girls hurry to their classes in their navy blue long-flowing gowns, the mandatory uniform. Their heads are covered. They chat, crack jokes, and discuss basketball. Boys are already in their classes. They wear trousers and sweaters and are clean-shaven. No mixing of students here.
This is far removed from the madrasa in Old Delhi, near Jama Masjid, where children wearing their pathani kurtas, skull caps and pyjamas, carrying the books under their arms, walk toward an old building where in one of the numerous alleys the old bearded teacher waits for them. Or in Patna, my hometown, where I saw teenage boys with beards, sitting against the crumbling walls of an old dome-shaped building, a madrasa, reflecting. These are places where a student learns religion only excluding all else that matters in the world. Religion is a responsibility of these madrasas in Asia and Middle East, to pass it on to children so that they live it, feel it, and promote it.
Madrasa is an Urdu term for school. These have existed since the 11th century when Nizamiyah, a learning center, was established in Baghdad. Mostly residential and providing free food and lodging to students, these essentially taught religion and prepared scholars to interpret the Shariat, the law, and Hadith, a secondary source of religious codes for Muslims. Students learned through recitation. Koran was memorized, which is a way of preserving the original text. Translations are not considered sacred, and if one has to pray, one has to do it in Arabic, the language of Muhammad.
There are more than 234 Islamic schools in United States and the numbers have increased post 9/11 because of negative stereotype of Muslims that they are terrorists and out if concern to practice and understand their religion, and so has the interest in them. Islam is the fastest growing religion in United States and it is estimated that there are more than 6 million Muslims in America.
The madrasas in South Asia, particularly in Pakistan and Afghanistan have come under a lot of fire from the media for promoting terrorism. Mullah Mohammed Omar, a student of a Pakistani madrasa called Darul Uloom Haqqania led the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the 1960s. Since then terrorism, fanaticism and madarasas have been linked and so have been identities.
Once inside the school, I pull my head scarf lower to cover any strands of hair on my face. As I sit outside the office of the principal, Robert Mond, I flip through the pages of Islamic Horizons. I come across Hadia Mubarak’s piece. She writes in ‘Living as a Muslim American’ how being American and a Muslim at the same time is an oxymoron, like the idea of the moon and the sun appearing in the sky at the same time. How the faith and nationality have come to mean parallel lines that never meet, casting a doubt on Muslim-American’s loyalties. She wonders how their identity has come to mean fanatics through books like American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us, a book by Steven Emerson that says militants are living in America, or films like Dateline showing honor killings of seven women.
The first female president of the group, Muslim Students Association, Mubarak is born to immigrants. Her mother is from Jordan, while her father from Syria. She writes, “I am a child of two cultures with a tongue of two languages and a belief that is universal. My roots belong somewhere in the vast Atlantic Ocean, linking a world my parents left behind with the world into which I arrive…I am neither Jordanian nor Syrian, for tradition rules that you belong to the soil that testifies to your birth and childhood.”
The connections or the desire thereof to keep the links intact have given rise to many Islamic schools in the west. And though some of such madrasas have been promoting extremist attitudes, the branding of all such institutions is unjustified and ignores the cause, the need for preservation of identity.
When Mond comes in, he asks if I want to attend a class. The social science class is just starting. The 10th grade girls in this class seem curious about me. I open my notebook and fidget with the recorder.
They are doing presentations on Japan today. One girl starts the presentation and after the lights are dimmed, I look around. The word ‘Geisha’ catches everyone's attention. The girls stop talking and stare at the pretty Japanese woman on the screen. I try to look at the map on the wall, trying to see if Israel is part of their world. The cover of Gossip Girl, a novel by Cecily Von Ziegesar, on a girl’s lap distracts me. The cover has a scantily clad woman’s bust on it. I look at the teacher. She looks away.
The girls are American. They talk about fashion, dating and proms. It is only the hijab that sets them apart from others.
The girls want to talk to me too. So, after class we go to sit in an empty classroom. They sit around me, three of them. There are hardcover Arabic books on the desks. Perhaps this is where they have their Arabic class.
The girls are skipping their class because they have the principal’s permission or so it seems. Sono Ghori, Zainab Mehtar and Fatimah Mahdee are all too eager to talk, sometimes cutting the other one off. They love their hijab, their religion and America too. This is where they were born. Ghori took up the hijab when she was very young. Her mother doesn’t wear it. But she does not stop her daughter from wearing it.
Ghori, 14, has big eyes, which light up when she speaks. Covered from head to toe in a blue gown with a matching hijab, she is born to Pakistani immigrants. She tells me how she wants to be a lawyer and change the politics of America, her country. She is upset when she sees Iraqi children orphaned by the war, she is disturbed about the Israel-Palestine conflict. And yes she knows Israel exists.
“I love America but there are certain things…,” she says, her voice fading off.
Zainab Mehtar, 14, wants to be a journalist, to write the truth, she says. Unlike Ghori, Mehtar is reserved. Both her parents are from Burma. Mehtar tells me how Sunday schools at the mosque are not enough to learn or connect with their faith. Her father taught them at home too. But in schools like these, she has come to learn more and freely practice her faith. She says she is shocked when I mention about the reports and how Islamic schools promoting terrorism.
But she has an idea. Everyone must come to these schools to see what exactly is going on. When the bell rings, she rushes out to perform afternoon prayers, her blue gown trailing behind her.
The third girl, Mahdee, is less talkative. Her parents converted to Islam before she was born. Though she was born into the faith, some of her siblings were not. They still live different lives. They party, go out and do other things that she would never do. But she says she understands. It is America and life is like this here.
Mahdee, 15, wants to be a cardiologist and work for the black community, her community.
None of them wants to be terrorists. And nothing seems unusual except the hijab and the Arabic letters on posters on the walls.
All the girls were born here or have been here for the major part of their lives. America is their home. Even though fitting in is difficult. Ghori has been called names at times. “Are you Osama’s daughter or wife?...they say,” she says.
They go on. Ghori thinks if she had gone to a public school, she would have been influenced, had gone out partying with guys, if she had been surrounded by non-Muslims, she would have done things that are against the religion and would have offended her parents, which is a sin in Islam. They say the paradise is at your mother’s feet.
What about the war? War is Haram for us. When The Koran says kill them, it does not mean kill them physically, but kill the faith in their hearts, kill the influence in their hearts, they explain. Islam is peace for them, literally and otherwise.
Normal conversations, normal choices, normal girls.
I first came across the dilemma of Muslim parents at the Sunday school at the local mosque here. The parents, who came and settled, are worried about the moral corruption of their children. And perhaps the fear has led them to enforce religion in their lives in a way that the west views as isolation and extremist. A Muslim child is expected to start praying from the age of seven. So, he is expected to learn the basic suras or prayers by heart. And then learn the language, Arabic, itself to understand the Koran, Mir Hussaini, the secretary of Islamic Society of Central New York says. In South Asia or Islamic countries in the Middle East, parents teach their children the basic tenets of Islam. But in America both parents are working and have very little time so the mosques have started these schools to pass on the religion to the children, Hussaini explains.
“They are necessary for the same reason that Catholic schools are. We want to teach them our religion,” says Karen Keyworth, director of League of Islamic Schools of America.
But many others do not think these schools are just trying to offer a protective environment or teach their values and religion.
Stephen Schwartz writes in his ‘What are they teaching in these Saudi-financed Schools’ that most of these Islamic academies are teaching the Muslim children to hate Christians and Jews. He uses Islamic Saudi Academy as an example. Keyworth says, “That (Islamic Saudi Academy) is the embassy school, it is for the embassy officials,” she says over the phone.
Many such schools run on donations or tuition money. Sometimes, they have fund-raising events in order to keep running. Al-Noor is also a non-profit organization. “My school does not get even $1 from outside the country,” says Dr. Saeed Shahzad, who is also one of the founders of the school and on the board of the Islamic Society of New England.
I also attended the Sunday school at the local mosque at Islamic Society of Central New York, which has around 120 students. Because the mosque is small, classes are now held in the basement. Earlier, the classes were held at Levy Middle School and the mosque used to pay the school $200 a day for the use of its classrooms on Sundays. When the new school superintendent came, the school raised the fee to $1,600, which the mosque could not afford.
It is definitely small. There are too many people. During the break at 11:15 a.m., the children ran around, chatted and ate their lunch. While the younger ones played, the slightly older ones like Anika Azad, 13, sat quietly on the stone steps and waited for the class to resume.
I sat with a group of girls in the Musallah, the first floor, marked for women, while Samina Masood, a volunteer, tried to teach them the Five Pillars of Islam. The girls, who are in hijab, did not seem convinced of Allah’s benevolence and one asks Masood why her wish was not granted, even after praying.
Masood, who is from Pakistan, tells me how difficult it is to preserve the religion in United States and Sunday schools at the mosques are trying to instill the values of Islam in children, who go to public schools and live in a world that is different from where their parents come from. “We can only try,” she tells me.
For one, the hijab, the modest dressing, doesn’t stick out at these schools. Little girls at Sunday school told me how they did not wear the hijab in their schools because they look different. The child is often living two lives in two different worlds. The weekdays are spent in public schools, in a secular world. The Sundays are spent trying to connect with their faith. The girls wear the hijab on Sundays.
“I wore it to my regular school one day and everybody stared at me. I felt weird,” said Samila Alemic, a student at the Sunday school.
Islam requires its followers to follow a code of conduct. That knowledge and practice is essential to being a Muslim. In India and Pakistan or Iran, Islam has been a religion for many centuries. The culture itself, the sound of the muezzin five times a day, the commonness of hijab and burqa and community prayers on Fridays on the roadside or wherever the Muslims can spread a carpet and others will understand, is defined by it. Talk about any town or city in India, a mention of an Islamic monument or food will come up. Personal laws exist for religious groups in terms of marriage, divorce and inheritance laws.
But it is different here in America. Though immigration of Muslims began in 1600s, it was not until the 1960s when immigration rules changed and many people from Asian countries starting coming in that the community really grew in terms of establishing their institutions. A mosque is the first to be established. A religious school next. Most mosques have the Sunday schools that impart the basic religious education. But these schools can’t fill in for culture or environment that is missing here.
All her life, Salma Kazmi, assistant director of Islamic Society of Boston, went to a public school. One of her friends forced her to eat when she was fasting during Ramadan. “You have to explain…you always feel different. I was asked what I got for Christmas. I felt left out,” she says. She had to go to school during Ramadan. The Islamic schools are closed during the month of Ramadan and other Islamic holidays.
The experiences are numerous. Keyworth tells me at a community college in one of the towns in Michigan where she teaches, students ask her if she has cancer because she covers her head. “These girls attended public schools. The public school material is biased…incorrect and missing diversity. Why would every one of my students think I have cancer?,” she asks.
These stories, plenty of them, of isolation and insecurity, made parents and educators feel the need for Islamic schools that provide Islamic environment, where children see others like themselves and hijab is not outwardly. This seemed the best way to keep the faith, while living as an American.
But absorption and acceptance in America is still to come. Dr. Saeed Shahzad, one of the founders of Al-Noor Academy, was at a hospital in New Jersey helping patients when the two planes struck the two towers of the world trade center. “Islam was introduced to the world that day as never before,” he says.
The Muslim community has been a victim of negative stereotyping since then. Ameen Sheaffer, who converted to Islam in May 1994, says after he converted, he started facing prejudices.
“My managers said- ‘what do you guys do at the mosque? Build bombs in the basement’? I have heard people referring to solution of the Muslim problem, saying that Yemen should be bombed and made into a parking lot,” he says.
Though, the Muslims condemned the act or did not agree with it, they were isolated, branded and misunderstood and so were there institutions. So, Muslim parents feel insecure and want to protect their children from stinging comments, of which there are many, and teach them Islam.
That’s why Al-Noor was established. It is an American-style religious school. It can well be called Al-Noor Madrasa, says one of the founders, Dr. Saeed Shahzad. The tuition is higher than public schools, around $3,800 per year. In that, these are different from the madrasas in Islamic countries.
Everyone asks me why I chose this school. May be because they let me in. Why am I doing this story? Because I am curious to know what terrorism is, how it is taught in Islamic schools and whether it is part of the curriculum. I am intrigued with the rhetoric that almost always puts Islam and terrorism together. I have been warned too. “They are dangerous people, take care,” I have been told. Don’t they all hate us Hindus? Isn’t the Jihad against us too?
All through January, February, and half of March, I had been calling schools to see if I could visit them. Many declined; some put me on hold. Perhaps they do not trust me enough. Then finally, I get an e mail from Robert Mond, the principle of Al-Noor Academy High School. He asks me to visit the school. So, I travel to Boston, take the commuter rail to Mansfield, lose my way a couple of times, but finally make it to the school on 20 Church St.
Al-Noor means truth in Arabic. It is the only Islamic high school in Massachusetts. Founded in September 2000, it has around 75 full time students. Students come from as far as Rhode Island and Dorchester, traveling for more than an hour to attend school. It was an outcome of parents’ desire to have a high school where their children, who were already attending religious school in lower grades at Islamic Academy of New England at Sharon, could go. So, St. Mary’s Church was bought in Mansfield and the school shifted form Quincy, where it was first established, to the more spacious property. The building, which was a Catholic church, dates back to at least 1920s. It had been abandoned for around 30 years before the school bought it, says Mond. They bought it, renovated it, put an elevator, added the third floor to serve as a mosque for the students and the locals to pray, put in ceramic tiles, and fixed the outside windows that were broken. Mond says limited funds restricted too much of change in the building, inside or outside. Was it done deliberately?
He disagrees, “That it looks like a church…that’s fine.” I ask about the cross at the back. He says it does not exist. I have a photograph of it. I don’t push.
Born a Catholic, Mond converted to Islam, traveled the Middle East, Oman and Syria. Islam, he says, aroused his curiosity. When he was looking for a job, he consciously chose to join an Islamic school. The money was far less compared to what he would have earned as a technician. But faith beckoned.
So Mond applied and got accepted. He explains the mission as providing an education that is rooted in Islamic faith.
“It is trying to develop a sense that they are in front of God, they would fear God and would be up to any bad things,” he says to me, later on the phone.
“Who is an American Muslim?” I ask him. Did the want the students to be one? This is important to me. This is the conflict, it is in the identity. “I remember that time John F. Kennedy said I am an American who is a Catholic. I tell them they are Americans first and then Muslims,” he says.
Identity is the key to understanding terrorism. Because terrorism is important for what it does to an identity. At times it defines individuals, even countries and sometimes it defines religion.
I was not able to meet with Dr. Saeed Shahzad, a neurologist and one of the founders of the school, but we talk on the phone later when I am in Syracuse.
Shahzad is from Pakistan. His daughter went to a private school until 4th grade. In 1994, when the Islamic Academy of New England was established, he transferred his daughter here. They started with just 26 students in a rented building in Quincy. It aimed to serve the Muslim population that he estimates to be around 30,000 in and around Boston. They, later, extended the school to 8th grade because the parents did not want their children to go to public schools or non-Muslim schools.
“We might lose our Islamic values, the way and the morals,” he says. He considers himself American now and is married to a Christian.
“In this country they have separation of Church and State. A Muslim child does pray. We start our assembly from the holy Koran. This was not available in public schools,” he says. “A Muslim prays five times a day…If you go to public schools you have to give up your religion for that period of time…Why God has been thrown out...I don’t know?”
I met Raja Abou-Samra at Al-Noor. She wanted her two children to learn the Islamic way of living. So, she put them in Al-Noor Academy. Her two older children, who she put in Christian private schools, were getting confused. Her husband was one of the community members, who were active in establishing the school so that the children could study in an Islamic environment. “My son was getting confused in the Catholic school. The values at schools were different and at home he was seeing different things,” she says.
Samra’s husband then decided to put their other two children in the Islamic school. The daughter, who is elder, just completed her high school.
“Her personality is stronger. My son…he becomes weaker. In his school, he is different from others, he avoids others. My daughter is one of them. She is open and confident,” she says.
Samra teaches Arabic and Koranic memorization to children at Al-Noor. She is from Syria. She tells me how religion was never a problem because Arabic being their first language, she could always pick up the Koran and read. She thinks children lack values and respect here. That’s missing.
At the Friday prayer meeting at Harvard University that I am invited to attend, I also meet Habeh Ismail, who is the vice-president of the university’s Muslim Students Association. She went to an Islamic school in New Jersey. “We were taught the same books. But the biggest emphasis was on values…you got into trouble for cheating,” she says.
After getting back from Boston, I wonder if I have searched enough. So, I called Abdeelah Ahmed of Al-Ihsan Academy, an Islamic school in Syracuse, and asked him if I could come to his school again.
I have been there once. The school is in an old building on West Onondaga Street. When I got there in the afternoon, I saw Ahmed, who is from Egypt, teaching children how to add and subtract.
I sat there for a while, peeped into the classrooms and chatted with the receptionist. It is just like any school- children looked bored in their classroom, teachers tried to get the calculation correct, parents waited outside for their children. It was around 3:30 p.m. and school was over.
I had borrowed their textbooks, pored over them, searching for terrorism, finding nothing.
But I want to go again and check. So, I walk to the school after work one day. At the corner of West Onondaga Street, I think if I will ever find the little terrorists in these schools. I call the school and tell them I am not coming. They have lined up a few children who could talk to me. But I am done. Maybe some other day, I tell them.
through my world window...these posts reflect some of my work, some of my thoughts and the entire me
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Friday, October 06, 2006
color, gender and caste...do they define our existence?
Lord Krishna asked his mother in a song titled ‘Radha kyon gori main kyon kala …’(why is Radha so fair and why am I dark-skinned?). Radha, his paramour was fair and Krishna was dark. Even God could not comprehend the dynamics of color and the bias associated with it. I don’t know what Yashoda, Krishna’s mother, had to say to that.
When I first listened to the song, a popular bhajan, it echoed my concern. My mother could not answer my question.
When my cousin, a girl, was born everyone was unhappy because she was not fair enough. Concerns about her getting married into a good family and getting a good match were expressed profoundly. And then began the ardous process of applying various homemade concoctions to make her fairer.
I saw fair women on television and in print selling everything from home appliances to men’s underwear. And I was confused. Why did color matter so much? Why was I asked to put sunscreen when I went out in the sun? Why was I asked to apply Fair & Lovely cream on my face? Why was there so much importance attached to color? And why were we, the not-so-fair ones, considered ugly?
When I took up the media and diversity class, I took it to understand the questions that have evaded me all my life. I come from a conservative and middle-class family and though education, unlike in other such families, was important, being beautiful was always more important. I did not quite understand why it was so.
The complementary status accorded to women was another norm that confounded me. In ancient societies like ours, gender roles are defined and it is very difficult to deviate or follow one’s own choices in life. Women always have to compromise and it is the men who get the upper hand. It is all in the power structures of the society that recognize male supremacy, sanction it and revere it. My aunts never had a choice in selecting their husbands. The couples had never met before marriage. Not even seen each other. Such things are difficult to imagine in free society like America. But they did happen. Divorce was almost always a woman’s fault, brought about by her mistakes and immorality. Women are willful agents, wrote the ancient philosopher Manu, and must be kept in check lest they corrupt men and society. That was what I grew up with.
I went to a good English school, learned about the sacred concepts of freedom, equality and fraternity but found them lacking in my own life and surroundings.
When Muniya came to clean the toilets, she announced her arrival in a loud voice. My mother and grandmother quickly removed things from her way so that they don’t get polluted by her shadow or touch. Muniya was a shudra, one belonging to the lower castes, ordained to clean up after us. She was an untouchable.
Caste system is another issue that plagues the Indian society. Decades after it was abolished by the Indian Constitution, untouchability is still practiced in India, even in cities like Mumbai that are progressive and considered at par with Tokyo and New York City. I feel this is also done to maintain class distinction and to divide votes by dividing people in certain groups. At a film festival in Mumbai, I saw this documentary on low caste women considered untouchables and not even permitted to draw water form the village well, being raped by men from the upper castes.
One woman who was interviewed said when it came to sex, there was no untouchability or class distinctions. There was no fear of getting polluted or corrupted by the touch, she said.
I was not allowed to eat at my Muslim friend’s house because it would violate my religion and faith. And I could not share my lunch with my best friend because she happened to be from a lower caste and I happened to be from an upper caste.
I do not blame my mother or my grandmother because they are products of social and cultural conditioning and never challenged those things. They never had the benefit of a liberal education or were not born in changing times like mine.
From that far and that situation, America looked tempting. It looked perfect. And I wanted to be here. But I was surprised to learn that color is an even bigger issue in United States. Racism is big here. Whiteness is beauty. And blue collar and white collar live different lives and almost never interact. Everywhere I go, I can feel people looking at me with special interest. They make me feel exotic, from the east, from a land of poverty and strange practices and rituals and spicy food. And I never fit in. I can feel it. I can sense it everywhere. At the food courts that I work at, in the class, on the street. The color is a giveaway.
The immigrants are no better. The hyphen never goes. One is always an African-American, an Indian-American and so on. The second or third generation Indians whose parents or grandparents came here and settled are still struggling to blend in and sometimes do not mix with people of their own group in order to maintain the uniqueness or to show the white people that they shun their groups or have nothing in common with their own people so that they find acceptance in a society that they live in but never quite merge with.
Color sticks to us, it shapes our identity, and it shapes other people’s perceptions and notions. And it determines our own views, frustrations and judgments. It determines our social and group behavior. There is a sense of understanding between me and Barbra because we are both products and victims of social conditioning and prejudices. We are both considered exotic and most people think that I am a product of eastern mysticism…that’s my identity at times. And it bothers me. And it bothers me especially because in this society of black and white, the browns are always a misfit with their ‘imperfect’ accent.
Race is our creation and the definition changes to include or exclude people depending on power politics. And in order to maintain the balance of power.
As per the discussion on groups, I feel both sides are equally responsible for creating the difference. One side tries to subdue people, the other side feel victimized but accepts it. That was the problem with the so-called low caste in India. They accepted it. Muniya accepted the tea in a broken cup that my mother pushed toward her with a stick. Why didn’t she challenge it? When I asked her to sit on the chair instead of squatting on the ground, why did she laugh and thought it was such an unbelievable concept? Because they believe in the distinctions and have seldom rebelled against it and the system believes in blocking access to education so that they don’t challenge the power.
These are some of the impressions that have influenced me and have shaped my thinking. I am hopeful though. And though outside pressure in form of revolutions can change society, they are not sustainable or desirable means of change as they bring destruction in their wake and often result in reversal of power structures with the same results.
I feel education will help the most. My mother was more progressive than my grandmother and I am more open to ideas than my mother. So, it changes. It is upon us to go out, find more about other people and think rationally and do away with our insecurities.
When I first listened to the song, a popular bhajan, it echoed my concern. My mother could not answer my question.
When my cousin, a girl, was born everyone was unhappy because she was not fair enough. Concerns about her getting married into a good family and getting a good match were expressed profoundly. And then began the ardous process of applying various homemade concoctions to make her fairer.
I saw fair women on television and in print selling everything from home appliances to men’s underwear. And I was confused. Why did color matter so much? Why was I asked to put sunscreen when I went out in the sun? Why was I asked to apply Fair & Lovely cream on my face? Why was there so much importance attached to color? And why were we, the not-so-fair ones, considered ugly?
When I took up the media and diversity class, I took it to understand the questions that have evaded me all my life. I come from a conservative and middle-class family and though education, unlike in other such families, was important, being beautiful was always more important. I did not quite understand why it was so.
The complementary status accorded to women was another norm that confounded me. In ancient societies like ours, gender roles are defined and it is very difficult to deviate or follow one’s own choices in life. Women always have to compromise and it is the men who get the upper hand. It is all in the power structures of the society that recognize male supremacy, sanction it and revere it. My aunts never had a choice in selecting their husbands. The couples had never met before marriage. Not even seen each other. Such things are difficult to imagine in free society like America. But they did happen. Divorce was almost always a woman’s fault, brought about by her mistakes and immorality. Women are willful agents, wrote the ancient philosopher Manu, and must be kept in check lest they corrupt men and society. That was what I grew up with.
I went to a good English school, learned about the sacred concepts of freedom, equality and fraternity but found them lacking in my own life and surroundings.
When Muniya came to clean the toilets, she announced her arrival in a loud voice. My mother and grandmother quickly removed things from her way so that they don’t get polluted by her shadow or touch. Muniya was a shudra, one belonging to the lower castes, ordained to clean up after us. She was an untouchable.
Caste system is another issue that plagues the Indian society. Decades after it was abolished by the Indian Constitution, untouchability is still practiced in India, even in cities like Mumbai that are progressive and considered at par with Tokyo and New York City. I feel this is also done to maintain class distinction and to divide votes by dividing people in certain groups. At a film festival in Mumbai, I saw this documentary on low caste women considered untouchables and not even permitted to draw water form the village well, being raped by men from the upper castes.
One woman who was interviewed said when it came to sex, there was no untouchability or class distinctions. There was no fear of getting polluted or corrupted by the touch, she said.
I was not allowed to eat at my Muslim friend’s house because it would violate my religion and faith. And I could not share my lunch with my best friend because she happened to be from a lower caste and I happened to be from an upper caste.
I do not blame my mother or my grandmother because they are products of social and cultural conditioning and never challenged those things. They never had the benefit of a liberal education or were not born in changing times like mine.
From that far and that situation, America looked tempting. It looked perfect. And I wanted to be here. But I was surprised to learn that color is an even bigger issue in United States. Racism is big here. Whiteness is beauty. And blue collar and white collar live different lives and almost never interact. Everywhere I go, I can feel people looking at me with special interest. They make me feel exotic, from the east, from a land of poverty and strange practices and rituals and spicy food. And I never fit in. I can feel it. I can sense it everywhere. At the food courts that I work at, in the class, on the street. The color is a giveaway.
The immigrants are no better. The hyphen never goes. One is always an African-American, an Indian-American and so on. The second or third generation Indians whose parents or grandparents came here and settled are still struggling to blend in and sometimes do not mix with people of their own group in order to maintain the uniqueness or to show the white people that they shun their groups or have nothing in common with their own people so that they find acceptance in a society that they live in but never quite merge with.
Color sticks to us, it shapes our identity, and it shapes other people’s perceptions and notions. And it determines our own views, frustrations and judgments. It determines our social and group behavior. There is a sense of understanding between me and Barbra because we are both products and victims of social conditioning and prejudices. We are both considered exotic and most people think that I am a product of eastern mysticism…that’s my identity at times. And it bothers me. And it bothers me especially because in this society of black and white, the browns are always a misfit with their ‘imperfect’ accent.
Race is our creation and the definition changes to include or exclude people depending on power politics. And in order to maintain the balance of power.
As per the discussion on groups, I feel both sides are equally responsible for creating the difference. One side tries to subdue people, the other side feel victimized but accepts it. That was the problem with the so-called low caste in India. They accepted it. Muniya accepted the tea in a broken cup that my mother pushed toward her with a stick. Why didn’t she challenge it? When I asked her to sit on the chair instead of squatting on the ground, why did she laugh and thought it was such an unbelievable concept? Because they believe in the distinctions and have seldom rebelled against it and the system believes in blocking access to education so that they don’t challenge the power.
These are some of the impressions that have influenced me and have shaped my thinking. I am hopeful though. And though outside pressure in form of revolutions can change society, they are not sustainable or desirable means of change as they bring destruction in their wake and often result in reversal of power structures with the same results.
I feel education will help the most. My mother was more progressive than my grandmother and I am more open to ideas than my mother. So, it changes. It is upon us to go out, find more about other people and think rationally and do away with our insecurities.
feminist...am i one?
Probably I am a feminist afterall but of a different kind. I don't look like them... Maybe I just don't want to put myself in a slot. But I believe all women are feminists in some way. All of them, wherever they are, or whoever they are, aspire for equality and rights. It is just that culture and faith, in some cases, takes precedence. Or they are just conditioned. Freedom is every man or women’s dream.
I remember having an argument with a Muslim friend about the purdah system, about women wearing the hijab. I just could not get it at that time when he said what can one do if women want to don the hijab themselves. I sort of understand that now. First, it is conditioning and second, it is conditioning. I guess feminism goes far beyond bra-burning, lesbianism and equal rights or pay for women.
It is the hijacking of the feminist movement by the elite women that worries me. They are the pretty ones, the powerful ones, who don Gucci sunglasses and carry Louis Vuitton bags, they clamor for glamour and their moments in print or on television. It is not women’s liberation or it is not women’s rights that matters to them. The movement has become an exclusionist force, a force that has zero impact on millions of women living in poverty or shame.
What have they done for the sex workers, who still live in shanties and contract AIDS because their customers would not wear condoms? What about the women in rural areas, who have to walk miles to get a pitcher of water? What about child marriages? What about dowry deaths? What about female infanticide that has taken such proportions that it is now feared that women will disappear from some communities? What about rape? What about domestic violence, outside and inside of marriage? What about incest? What about child molestation?
The feminist movement started for all the right reasons, but has degenerated into a restrictive movement obsessed with making non-issues national stories. And they do become, lapped by an ever-biased media that sustains itself on sensationalism. I remember quite a few incidents. And I am strictly talking about India here, though from my own perceptions of the U.S. media, it fares no better. The Miss Universe pageant when it was held in Bangalore, India, invited the ire of these feminists, who then marched and rallied and spoke on television. They objected to the commodification of women, threatened to stage dharnas if the swim-wear round was not taken off from the show. Then came the controversial video where the singer’s g-strings are seen. They march again and disrupt a show saying that the singer was promoting nudity and it would lead to rapes and objectification of women. Now, these are events, not processes. And being in the media for a short time has taught me that events make the headlines and processes…well who cares for them.
AIDS is big, and even bigger is tuberculosis, but nobody frets after those. Because they are not action-oriented news. In fact these are not news. What’s topical about them? These are routine affairs.
When I watched the clips in class the other day, I was intrigued. Sexual liberation of women is good and desired but is that all? Voting rights are needed, but is that an end in itself?
During my research for a paper that I wrote on media’s coverage of domestic violence in India, I came across very interesting clips and women too. Well-known women journalists said they did not chose to write about women’s issues because they were afraid of being branded as feminists. These are powerful women, some are editors of national dailies, yet they would not take up these matters and they would fear the branding. Women’s issues have become non-issues and that’s where the danger comes from. And on top of it, the fear about being branded. Why is feminism looked down upon?
I tried thinking about the term itself. And the automatic associations took it to different dimensions. The word is now related with man-haters, lesbians and manly women, who wear loose clothes, wear their hair short and rant about men. Also, it has come to mean a profession of women, who have been rejected by men and are thus against all men and have taken up the cause of women out of bitterness, not out of love for womankind or passion for fighting for women’s rights.
When women are starving or dying slowly, still selling their bodies, they don’t have time to think about equal opportunities, or feminism. The feminist movement has to restructure itself to focus on core issues that affect women’s living status and not just their representation.
Women journalists must make an effort to address these issues. Most cases of domestic violence are relegated to briefs columns or in obscure city crime sections. The society and media have come to treat these as routine events and not social evils. A dowry death makes headlines but seldom do columns or analysis follow the publication. The media has failed the women.
I come from a traditional patriarchical society, a society that venerates male hegemony. And if we don’t fight, no one else will. We have to redefine feminism and give voice to the vloiceless. We have to reform the media by removing its obsession with TOPICAL and make it relevant to the society. We have a lot to do.
I remember having an argument with a Muslim friend about the purdah system, about women wearing the hijab. I just could not get it at that time when he said what can one do if women want to don the hijab themselves. I sort of understand that now. First, it is conditioning and second, it is conditioning. I guess feminism goes far beyond bra-burning, lesbianism and equal rights or pay for women.
It is the hijacking of the feminist movement by the elite women that worries me. They are the pretty ones, the powerful ones, who don Gucci sunglasses and carry Louis Vuitton bags, they clamor for glamour and their moments in print or on television. It is not women’s liberation or it is not women’s rights that matters to them. The movement has become an exclusionist force, a force that has zero impact on millions of women living in poverty or shame.
What have they done for the sex workers, who still live in shanties and contract AIDS because their customers would not wear condoms? What about the women in rural areas, who have to walk miles to get a pitcher of water? What about child marriages? What about dowry deaths? What about female infanticide that has taken such proportions that it is now feared that women will disappear from some communities? What about rape? What about domestic violence, outside and inside of marriage? What about incest? What about child molestation?
The feminist movement started for all the right reasons, but has degenerated into a restrictive movement obsessed with making non-issues national stories. And they do become, lapped by an ever-biased media that sustains itself on sensationalism. I remember quite a few incidents. And I am strictly talking about India here, though from my own perceptions of the U.S. media, it fares no better. The Miss Universe pageant when it was held in Bangalore, India, invited the ire of these feminists, who then marched and rallied and spoke on television. They objected to the commodification of women, threatened to stage dharnas if the swim-wear round was not taken off from the show. Then came the controversial video where the singer’s g-strings are seen. They march again and disrupt a show saying that the singer was promoting nudity and it would lead to rapes and objectification of women. Now, these are events, not processes. And being in the media for a short time has taught me that events make the headlines and processes…well who cares for them.
AIDS is big, and even bigger is tuberculosis, but nobody frets after those. Because they are not action-oriented news. In fact these are not news. What’s topical about them? These are routine affairs.
When I watched the clips in class the other day, I was intrigued. Sexual liberation of women is good and desired but is that all? Voting rights are needed, but is that an end in itself?
During my research for a paper that I wrote on media’s coverage of domestic violence in India, I came across very interesting clips and women too. Well-known women journalists said they did not chose to write about women’s issues because they were afraid of being branded as feminists. These are powerful women, some are editors of national dailies, yet they would not take up these matters and they would fear the branding. Women’s issues have become non-issues and that’s where the danger comes from. And on top of it, the fear about being branded. Why is feminism looked down upon?
I tried thinking about the term itself. And the automatic associations took it to different dimensions. The word is now related with man-haters, lesbians and manly women, who wear loose clothes, wear their hair short and rant about men. Also, it has come to mean a profession of women, who have been rejected by men and are thus against all men and have taken up the cause of women out of bitterness, not out of love for womankind or passion for fighting for women’s rights.
When women are starving or dying slowly, still selling their bodies, they don’t have time to think about equal opportunities, or feminism. The feminist movement has to restructure itself to focus on core issues that affect women’s living status and not just their representation.
Women journalists must make an effort to address these issues. Most cases of domestic violence are relegated to briefs columns or in obscure city crime sections. The society and media have come to treat these as routine events and not social evils. A dowry death makes headlines but seldom do columns or analysis follow the publication. The media has failed the women.
I come from a traditional patriarchical society, a society that venerates male hegemony. And if we don’t fight, no one else will. We have to redefine feminism and give voice to the vloiceless. We have to reform the media by removing its obsession with TOPICAL and make it relevant to the society. We have a lot to do.
terrorism...who defines it?
Look Into My Eyes
Look into my eyes
Tell me what ya see
U don’t see a damn thing
Cuz u can’t relate to me
U blinded by our differences
My life makes no sense to u
I’m the persecuted one
U the red, white and blue
Each day u wake in tranquility
No fears to cross your eyes
Each day I wake in gratitude
Thankin’ God He let me rise
Ya worry ‘bout your education
And the bills u have to pay
I worry ‘bout my vulnerable life
And if I’ll survive another day
Ya biggest fear is getting a ticket
As ya cruise your Cadillac
My fear is that the tank that’s just left
Will turn around and come back
Yet do u know the truth of where ya money goes
Do u let the media deceive your mind
Is this a truth that nobody knows
Someone tell me
…See I’ve known terror for quite some time
57 years so cruel
Terror breathes the air I breathe
It’s the check point on my way to school
Terror is the robbery of my land
And the torture of my mother
The imprisonment of my innocent father
The bullet in my baby brother
The bulldozers and the tanks
The gasses and the guns
The bombs that fall outside my door
All due to your funds
You blame me for defending myself
Against the ways of my enemies
I’m terrorized in my own land
What, and I’m the terrorist
… So if I won’t be here tomorrow
It’s written in my fate
May the future bring a brighter day
The end of our wait- Outlandish
I came across the lyrics while searching for something on the net. It is so true and so sad. It is just how you look at it. Or how the media shapes your vision or distorts it that you don’t see the pain but only the threat. And then we discriminate.
Sometimes, I feel lost here. I feel sad when I keep saying the same thing in my classes and all I get is a blank look. It is like knocking on doors that perhaps will never open up. I feel frustrated at these times and I wonder how big is a task it is for the people form the Middle East to get themselves understood, to say their religion is not terrorism or they are normal people living in terror.
What is terrorism? The definition seems to be shifting depending on which side of the world you are. The media defines it for the west. It brands Muslims, makes it common knowledge that Muslims are arrogant people, who are violent and fanatics.
When I met the 18 journalists from the Middle East and Europe who came to Syracuse University as part of a program sponsored by the state department, I saw how eager they were to get themselves understood, to tell them about their lives, their views and explain they are not against Americans but the American government’s foreign policy.
Amer Jomah does not want to go back to his country. A journalist form Iraq, he told me how dangerous it is to live in Iraq, how difficult it is to go out and just have coffee at a café. You don’t do those things there, he told me. After sunset, there is nobody on the roads. Jomah does not see the situation improving there. When I offered to visit Iraq, he laughed. He thought I was mad. It is dangerous, he warned. And then a girl in my class said how Americans did not kill or kidnap journalists like the Iraqis and how her mom would kill her if she went to Iraq. I wondered if it is not us who had screwed up in Iraq and now are afraid of even going there. What about the people there? What is the media doing? Why is it silent? Is it not approving of the government’s policies or the people’s biases in its silence?
I wanted to change the world. Sometimes, I wonder if I can.
I belong to the ‘model minority’ and I have never dealt with a negative image myself. But I understand how it must feel when people call you names and link you to terrorists
I met the journalists at my religion class and then later at Sheraton hotel where they were staying. Marek Kubicki, a journalist from Poland, asked me to come. So, I went expecting others to be there too. But except for one girl from my class, there were no students there.
We started talking. Except for Kubicki and a journalist from Denmark, most felt United States was too good. I agreed but only partly. I told them about racism, Hill TV incident and they were shocked. I don’t know why I did it. May be to shatter the myth about United States. That reminded me of my own feeling when I came to United States. I had thought everything to be wonderful here. I could not believe that racism existed here. They could not either. I asked them, “What did you think…you will find rivers of milk and honey here? That everything is equal here.”
But that’s what the media has led them to believe. That America is great. That it is a land of opportunities, of freedom and of equality. The images show the good life in America, the great universities, the retail stores and the happy people. What they seldom show is the poverty here, the inequality here.
Look into my eyes
Tell me what ya see
U don’t see a damn thing
Cuz u can’t relate to me
U blinded by our differences
My life makes no sense to u
I’m the persecuted one
U the red, white and blue
Each day u wake in tranquility
No fears to cross your eyes
Each day I wake in gratitude
Thankin’ God He let me rise
Ya worry ‘bout your education
And the bills u have to pay
I worry ‘bout my vulnerable life
And if I’ll survive another day
Ya biggest fear is getting a ticket
As ya cruise your Cadillac
My fear is that the tank that’s just left
Will turn around and come back
Yet do u know the truth of where ya money goes
Do u let the media deceive your mind
Is this a truth that nobody knows
Someone tell me
…See I’ve known terror for quite some time
57 years so cruel
Terror breathes the air I breathe
It’s the check point on my way to school
Terror is the robbery of my land
And the torture of my mother
The imprisonment of my innocent father
The bullet in my baby brother
The bulldozers and the tanks
The gasses and the guns
The bombs that fall outside my door
All due to your funds
You blame me for defending myself
Against the ways of my enemies
I’m terrorized in my own land
What, and I’m the terrorist
… So if I won’t be here tomorrow
It’s written in my fate
May the future bring a brighter day
The end of our wait- Outlandish
I came across the lyrics while searching for something on the net. It is so true and so sad. It is just how you look at it. Or how the media shapes your vision or distorts it that you don’t see the pain but only the threat. And then we discriminate.
Sometimes, I feel lost here. I feel sad when I keep saying the same thing in my classes and all I get is a blank look. It is like knocking on doors that perhaps will never open up. I feel frustrated at these times and I wonder how big is a task it is for the people form the Middle East to get themselves understood, to say their religion is not terrorism or they are normal people living in terror.
What is terrorism? The definition seems to be shifting depending on which side of the world you are. The media defines it for the west. It brands Muslims, makes it common knowledge that Muslims are arrogant people, who are violent and fanatics.
When I met the 18 journalists from the Middle East and Europe who came to Syracuse University as part of a program sponsored by the state department, I saw how eager they were to get themselves understood, to tell them about their lives, their views and explain they are not against Americans but the American government’s foreign policy.
Amer Jomah does not want to go back to his country. A journalist form Iraq, he told me how dangerous it is to live in Iraq, how difficult it is to go out and just have coffee at a café. You don’t do those things there, he told me. After sunset, there is nobody on the roads. Jomah does not see the situation improving there. When I offered to visit Iraq, he laughed. He thought I was mad. It is dangerous, he warned. And then a girl in my class said how Americans did not kill or kidnap journalists like the Iraqis and how her mom would kill her if she went to Iraq. I wondered if it is not us who had screwed up in Iraq and now are afraid of even going there. What about the people there? What is the media doing? Why is it silent? Is it not approving of the government’s policies or the people’s biases in its silence?
I wanted to change the world. Sometimes, I wonder if I can.
I belong to the ‘model minority’ and I have never dealt with a negative image myself. But I understand how it must feel when people call you names and link you to terrorists
I met the journalists at my religion class and then later at Sheraton hotel where they were staying. Marek Kubicki, a journalist from Poland, asked me to come. So, I went expecting others to be there too. But except for one girl from my class, there were no students there.
We started talking. Except for Kubicki and a journalist from Denmark, most felt United States was too good. I agreed but only partly. I told them about racism, Hill TV incident and they were shocked. I don’t know why I did it. May be to shatter the myth about United States. That reminded me of my own feeling when I came to United States. I had thought everything to be wonderful here. I could not believe that racism existed here. They could not either. I asked them, “What did you think…you will find rivers of milk and honey here? That everything is equal here.”
But that’s what the media has led them to believe. That America is great. That it is a land of opportunities, of freedom and of equality. The images show the good life in America, the great universities, the retail stores and the happy people. What they seldom show is the poverty here, the inequality here.
are newspapers dying???
When Janet Cooke told the story of ‘Jimmy’, an eight-year-old boy in a low-income neighborhood of Washington D.C., who was addicted to heroin, she thought she would get away with it. And she did. She even won the Pulitzer Prize for the moving story that appeared in Washington Post on Sept. 20, 1980.
It took months for the editors to find out that “Jimmy with velvety brown eyes and needle marks freckling the baby-smooth skin of his thin brown arms” did not exist. He was her creation. The Pulitzer was taken away from Cooke and she was sacked.
Examples of fabrication, plagiarism and using composite characters in journalism are many. Many have committed these and got away like Cooke did. And in an age, where Internet has empowered the readers with fact-checking abilities, it is imperative that journalists should be more careful than ever in order to retain and in some cases, regain the credibility.
“We have to bring humanity back into journalism,” said Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine.com at a panel discussion on ethics and journalism at The New York Society for Ethical Culture Wednesday.
Research shows that trust in the media has declined. People are beginning to trust a fellow citizen’s comments or reviews more than that of a journalist. And with online medium gaining ground and many of us choosing to click the mouse instead of buying newspapers, it has become very essential that we tread carefully and be thorough with our research and facts and establish that we don’t mess with facts, that we have the correct information. This means a lot of work but the age demands it.
When I visited my brother and his family in Detroit, I got up in the morning and went downstairs expecting to find the newspaper. I did not. Alter, I was told they did not subscribe to any. They preferred to read news online.
Many feel that newspapers will soon become extinct and that they already are an endangered species. With Internet changing the media landscape, it is increasingly becoming a challenging task for editors and reporters to retain their readership and maintain credibility, while transitioning to online format.
What this means is that newspapers, in order to survive and thrive, have to change form and change content. Breaking news is most suitable for the online media. What I can read the previous evening online, I would not want to see it on the front page of the newspaper that I buy in the morning because it is stale news. I believe the newspapers have to veer toward public service journalism and focus more on analytical and in-depth reporting and come out with solutions. This is just one of the examples.
There are many sides of the story now instead of just focusing on the two sides that we are supposed to as journalists. Any story can be told in a million ways and that’s precisely what the bloggers are doing. They give a million more perspectives. So, as creators of information, we have to learn more, read more and be receptive to a lot of different, maybe conflicting views. We have to be innovative. And the first step toward doing that is that we have to view blogging or the online medium as a collaborative force and not an adversary.
The managing editor of Time magazine, Richard Stengel, who was another panelist, said blogging and pod casting signifies the flowering of a new kind of journalism. When everyone can be a fact-checker, the responsibility to be accurate and truthful increases manifold, he added.
“The key to survival is how to reckon to all that,” he said. I could not agree more. As a student and a journalist, I am worried about my profession and I feel concerned when others tell me that they don’t trust us.
I believe and I agree with Jarvis that instead of newspapers getting frustrated with the whole deal of saving their papers, it is essential that media organizations redefine their relationship with the public. Citizen journalism, as some call it, has become a trend and people are now increasingly posting their comments, reports and even videos on the web. The Internet is vast and unlike the television industry, it is not regulated. Nor does it knows boundaries or is limited to countries.
I know at this moment my thoughts are coherent. I was talking with my roommate the other day and his comments made me think. He said in an age where small kids are hooked on to the Internet, the possibility of newspapers continuing in the future looks bleak. Surely, there was some truth in that statement but I don’t believe the newspapers will ever die. Because we survived the television and the radio, I am hopeful we will overcome this crisis too.
I still buy my newspaper, at least one. This way I hold on to my faith in my profession and I contribute to the survival.
We have seen so many changes already. With journalism becoming “functional journalism”, I am afraid the real issues will never surface and ethics are slowly being kept aside to keep the revenues. I am scared of an age where newspapers will completely forget their loyalty to the citizens and will only become a medium for propaganda and trade.
But I am hopeful. I chose this because of the passion I felt for writing and reading and I am sure there are enough who care. I urge all of us to think and be more responsible because it is crucial for us to continue.
Internet is a friend and let us all embrace it and work out a way for both to exist. Blogging is good but it lacks the discipline. Bloggers are not accountable. They can contradict us but as professionals, let us be the watchdogs and help people know the truth. Blogging can help with presenting various viewpoints and as a source of story ideas for us….but let us work toward a new future where newspapers are at every doorstep.
It took months for the editors to find out that “Jimmy with velvety brown eyes and needle marks freckling the baby-smooth skin of his thin brown arms” did not exist. He was her creation. The Pulitzer was taken away from Cooke and she was sacked.
Examples of fabrication, plagiarism and using composite characters in journalism are many. Many have committed these and got away like Cooke did. And in an age, where Internet has empowered the readers with fact-checking abilities, it is imperative that journalists should be more careful than ever in order to retain and in some cases, regain the credibility.
“We have to bring humanity back into journalism,” said Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine.com at a panel discussion on ethics and journalism at The New York Society for Ethical Culture Wednesday.
Research shows that trust in the media has declined. People are beginning to trust a fellow citizen’s comments or reviews more than that of a journalist. And with online medium gaining ground and many of us choosing to click the mouse instead of buying newspapers, it has become very essential that we tread carefully and be thorough with our research and facts and establish that we don’t mess with facts, that we have the correct information. This means a lot of work but the age demands it.
When I visited my brother and his family in Detroit, I got up in the morning and went downstairs expecting to find the newspaper. I did not. Alter, I was told they did not subscribe to any. They preferred to read news online.
Many feel that newspapers will soon become extinct and that they already are an endangered species. With Internet changing the media landscape, it is increasingly becoming a challenging task for editors and reporters to retain their readership and maintain credibility, while transitioning to online format.
What this means is that newspapers, in order to survive and thrive, have to change form and change content. Breaking news is most suitable for the online media. What I can read the previous evening online, I would not want to see it on the front page of the newspaper that I buy in the morning because it is stale news. I believe the newspapers have to veer toward public service journalism and focus more on analytical and in-depth reporting and come out with solutions. This is just one of the examples.
There are many sides of the story now instead of just focusing on the two sides that we are supposed to as journalists. Any story can be told in a million ways and that’s precisely what the bloggers are doing. They give a million more perspectives. So, as creators of information, we have to learn more, read more and be receptive to a lot of different, maybe conflicting views. We have to be innovative. And the first step toward doing that is that we have to view blogging or the online medium as a collaborative force and not an adversary.
The managing editor of Time magazine, Richard Stengel, who was another panelist, said blogging and pod casting signifies the flowering of a new kind of journalism. When everyone can be a fact-checker, the responsibility to be accurate and truthful increases manifold, he added.
“The key to survival is how to reckon to all that,” he said. I could not agree more. As a student and a journalist, I am worried about my profession and I feel concerned when others tell me that they don’t trust us.
I believe and I agree with Jarvis that instead of newspapers getting frustrated with the whole deal of saving their papers, it is essential that media organizations redefine their relationship with the public. Citizen journalism, as some call it, has become a trend and people are now increasingly posting their comments, reports and even videos on the web. The Internet is vast and unlike the television industry, it is not regulated. Nor does it knows boundaries or is limited to countries.
I know at this moment my thoughts are coherent. I was talking with my roommate the other day and his comments made me think. He said in an age where small kids are hooked on to the Internet, the possibility of newspapers continuing in the future looks bleak. Surely, there was some truth in that statement but I don’t believe the newspapers will ever die. Because we survived the television and the radio, I am hopeful we will overcome this crisis too.
I still buy my newspaper, at least one. This way I hold on to my faith in my profession and I contribute to the survival.
We have seen so many changes already. With journalism becoming “functional journalism”, I am afraid the real issues will never surface and ethics are slowly being kept aside to keep the revenues. I am scared of an age where newspapers will completely forget their loyalty to the citizens and will only become a medium for propaganda and trade.
But I am hopeful. I chose this because of the passion I felt for writing and reading and I am sure there are enough who care. I urge all of us to think and be more responsible because it is crucial for us to continue.
Internet is a friend and let us all embrace it and work out a way for both to exist. Blogging is good but it lacks the discipline. Bloggers are not accountable. They can contradict us but as professionals, let us be the watchdogs and help people know the truth. Blogging can help with presenting various viewpoints and as a source of story ideas for us….but let us work toward a new future where newspapers are at every doorstep.