News for us is like the waves in the ocean. A wave comes once and goes back to the ocean leaving no permanent imprints. So do the events and the incidents, which see the front page of the newspapers and headlines in the television news and after a while, go into oblivion. I wonder if they leave any impression on us at all or not!
When we are busy with the Film Festival, let us just switch on our memories and remind us of a news item ‘17 babies die in a city hospital for children’ that rocked the headlines a week back. I know we blew the incident out of proportion (for the right cause though!). I saw the flash on one of the regional channels and rushed to BC Roy Hospital for Children. None of us found any family members of the children who died. The authority fed us with the information all the babies came in a critical condition and there was no question of negligence on their part! Normally 4/5 babies die daily in that hospital. Factually there was nothing wrong in the information passed on by the ‘media-friendly’ superintendent of the BC Roy Hospital for Children.
Interestingly the non-story got a twist when the chief minister decided to visit the hospital with his colleague in the health department. I think he didn’t have much work to do on that Saturday evening and successfully did the damage-control by visiting the hospital himself on the first day the news broke (I never saw him reacting so fast!). Never mind the fact the media persons were thrown out of the hospital premises during his visit.
We carried the story for two days. Some political parties tried to gain some mileage from the incident, the health minister ordered investigation and then we forgot it on the third day as usual (dipping down the ocean of news). If you take any interest and follow the mortality rate in the BC Roy, you can again get another story in a few days ‘20 babies die in two days’!
It is true this shocking figure hits us occasionally, but the figure is really ‘normal’. Even if we accept Superintendent’s words and consider it to be normal, real stories still remain at the back. Nobody answered in public what is taking so long to upgrade the infrastructure of the hospital with Sourav Ganguly donating a lump sum amount to build a new block nearly two years back? None can deny the fact there is lack of infrastructure in this government-run hospital for children. This kind superficial journalism at least help us to ring the alarm bell, may be, once a while!
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