Another English language channel
Posted by bloggila on February 5, 2009
So I was thinking the other day, why don’t I watch Dawn News? From Convent School where speaking in Urdu was largely forbidden except during the Urdu class to a home where my American-University-educated mother encouraged speaking and thinking in English, Urdu has been my second language despite my Pakistani nationality. Now I am not about to take the post colonial lens on this and lament the inadequacy of my Urdu because of some latent, inbred cultural complex. I honestly don’t think that the limitations of language have ever made me less patriotic than the next person. What I do find curious though is that despite being a Pakistani who routinely reads an English newspaper, I am not at all drawn to a channel that spews news in English and just while I am contemplating this indifference, Express launches a competitor.
I think a good chunk of my antipathy has to do with all the pseudo British and American accents that go across the board. If the English language channel caters to the English speaking Pakistani then why does it not talk in the native dialect of English? If however it is operating as do outsourced call centers and requires to really communicate with the Western world then why is its programming directed at a niche Pakistani market where all the men and women pointedly exude their affluence? For example, why is it not possible for the women anchors to be wearing shalwars instead of capris and still be talking in English? It appears as though only the super affluent in this city prefer communicating in English when in reality there is a good section of middle class Karachiites who do too but neither are they represented and nor are they targeted. Documentaries too take on a very sanitized, outsider look at local happenings. This is clearly not akin to al-Jazeera’s philosophy which seeks to speak to the West in its own language and debunk its hegemony through counteractive devices. This is more a case of ’sell to the market which will yield the more profitable returns’: use the sweatshop base and generate income in foreign currency.
So if one of these was not enough, we now have another one to grace the idiot box.
U said
british accents work on me like flirting and yet i hate that they make every anchor speak that way. however, their reporting is way better than mostly vague and sexed up and sometimes opinionated ‘news’ of, for example, Geo TV. I have seen two or three shows on DAWN that have quality content and satisfy the analytical whore in me.
U said
i do agree with u on over representation of a certain section.
you know, even with their newspaper i have noticed that the editors and regular contributors seem to belong to the same class and express the same kind of views.
bloggila said
I don’t think Dawn reporting can be compared to Geo reporting at all. Geo is sensationalist and that is part of its mission statement, so to speak. When Dawn however distances itself from the grime and muck that is true to its milieu, it is not in the name of objectivity but in wanting to take an outsider’s stance. One documentary that they did I think it was called, “Unsung heroes” on camera crew that was injured while recording perilous political moments was conceptually very strong. However Naveen, who to give the devil its due, speaks like a normal Pakistani, is in very close fitted jeans and sweater throughout the footage in their homes in Lyari and Malir and that makes me wonder as to why is there such a strong need to create a visible disparity between the two sections? Why isn’t sensitivity extended to people’s poverty and their cultural mores, when they are in fact part of the same geopolitical space? Name the shows you liked, I’ll check them out.
As for the newspaper, well Images is for the niche market and some part of the Sunday Magazine seems to go that route but the rest of the paper is very general access material.
U said
i didn’t mean content as much as the people behind it. i could be wrong but home grown middle class seems non existent. of course, the major chunk is news and hence of general interest.
the shows..mostly current affairs. i used to watch one by the name “the alternative” or “the alternate angle” or something like that. and another show that started in its place (perhaps “in focus”). “30-30″ was another good one. but i dont think they are on air anymore. you can watch “News Eye”. the host has british accent but that is because she’s from the UK.