*'Then I returned and considered all the oppression that is done under the sun:
And look! The tears of the
oppressed,
But they have no comforter-
On the side of their oppressors
there was power,
But they have no comforter.'
**Good reporting job, you! (that is, Brigitte Purcell, of Aotearoa-New Zealand's nightly news show, (TV3's) 'Newshub', on Sunday (March 19th)): on your inspired and inspiring ***news item on the Indian newspaper Balaknama, created and run by street kids in that land.
Their tale and quest means much to me, as it was as a young adult, a teenage student at my local high school that I spent lots of time researching and writing and interviewing folk for various news reports, feature-length investigative articles, and opinion/editorial 'pieces'/columns throughout my years there - for our at times (long before my own, I must hasten to add!) nationally-renowned, even sometimes reviled, student newspaper Mercury - as well as serving briefly as KVHS (now Kaikorai Valley College, then Kaikorai Valley High School)'s representative on the International Year of the Child's Dunedin City Council-organized 'Student Council for a Day'.
But back to the subject of our musings here: all credit and (moral) power to Shonna, Jyoti, and their colleagues,
creators of and contributors to this (?twelve-year-old), monthly
eight-page paper, representing, literally-speaking, 'the voice of the
children'; speaking thus on behalf of themselves and their fellow Indian
street kids, with children sharing their own true-life stories in
special support groups editor Shonna et al have set up (partly for that very purpose). Yes, they've all 'been there and done (or perhaps, more accurately, experienced) that'...and so are in a unique position to champion their own...speaking truth to power, as some would say; in their own unique sphere of influence (however powerless onlookers might regard them).
So may their tribe flourish, going from strength to strength, and, however scoffed at or doubtless scorned by some, nevertheless constituting real 'movers and shakers' in their caste-wracked Indian society, as they seek to deal with and to that deep-seated scourge of their great land, the seemingly ineradicable bane and evil of child exploitation...supposedly long since eradicated from 'our own' Western lands (by the likes of ****'the Reverend' (?Samuel) Waddell/Weddell here in Dunedin in his famous 1888 sermon upon 'the sin of cheapness').
Yes, let's hear it one more time for these youthful journalists/newspaper pioneers as they doughtily confront the inequities upon the streets of India, in the process fearlessly exposing the iniquitous perpetrators thereof, and thus and so inevitably 'earning' the ire and opposition of the (relatively) rich and powerful in their society. Real investigative journalism is sadly pretty well the relic of a bygone age here in the West, so may its embers yet burn on in Shonna and Jyoti's writings in their ancient, remarkable and mysterious land.
*King Solomon in his (near deathbed, repentant-laden) book of Ecclesiastes (4:1): as cited in
The Holy Bible, The New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers Inc, Nashville, 1983. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
**To use a mannerism borrowed from the classic late 70s'/early 80s' sitcom 'The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin', a phraseology peculiar, if I recall rightly, to Reggie's brother - whose name I (presently) can't recall.
***One of numerous such in-depth 'magazine'-style news items, incidentally, over recent weeks, months and years...which is but one of innumerable instances of the sheer quality of their nightly 6 p.m. news programme, despite persistent - and moreover wholly ill-founded - suggestions to the contrary. By the by - I'll add at no extra cost - the apparent fact that Nzers who watch the box (at that time slot) on a regular basis prefer TV1 News - not to mention TV1's Seven Sharp over against either TV3's former show, The Story, or its recent equivalent The Project - says a heckuva lot more about peoples' (I must hasten to add, pretty well media-induced) collective inattention span alongside en masse obsession with trivia, the sensational and/or pure *****'human interest', even tabloid journalism - over against the substantial and important these days - than anything else... . Certainly it is no reflection upon the relative quality of the respective news offerings on TV1's & TV3's weeknightly 6 p.m. news bulletins.
The comparison may initially seem altogether irrelevant, but the closest analogy I can make is of those who scoff and sneer at a piece of genuine, authentic art, while celebrating the doling out of thousands, even millions, for and upon the latest bits of out-and-out, way out there crud, even crass ******biz-art(e): 'artwork' so-called (served up to an unwitting and witless, aesthetically-deprived and emasculated public under the all-embracing rubric of 'modern art'). Those doing so thus make a commentary, yea, an unerring judgment even, not so much upon the relative quality, or lack thereof, of a particular artwork so-called, but rather, I'd respectfully suggest, upon their own conspicuous lack of good taste: end of story.
****As I've often enough noted elsewhere - in line with my Master's example - not a term I'd tend to use!
*****I say this, neither to deride human interest stories as such, nor to suggest there's no place whatsoever for them in the broader scheme of journalism - after all, positive, so-called 'feel good' news is every bit as legitimate 'news' (and accordingly 'newsworthy') and hence deserves its place alongside the rather relentless stream of negative 'real-life' journalism the Western public is almost constantly inundated with these days; its simply that some journos seem to wallow, even revel in the same at the very moment that far more pressing at times even, dare I suggest, earth-shattering (or at least, at times if only in its implications, deeply fraught) news is simply screaming out to be covered, and moreover covered properly. (In some ways it could even be said that Balakhama seems to be a conduit of both these news streams at the same time - i.e. 'human interest' items and the utmost serious issues and story lines, though without the same emphasis, obviously, upon that purely 'good news' variety of material.)
******How d'ya like it, i.e. that new word I've just created/coined? I quite do, to be perfectly blunt.
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