Journey of Broadcast Journalism in Bangladesh: Challenges and Prospects

Abstract

Globally, Broadcast journalism is considered the most powerful medium to influence audience. In Bangladesh, broadcast journalism thrives when private television channels started flourishing around two decades ago. Television journalism created news hungry among the masses giving hourly news bulletin. But the ongoing pandemic Covid-19 has impacted everything especially the media. During this time broadcast journalism was very crucial as people were news hungry but at the same time it was very risky as World Health Organization termed wrong messages as “Info emic”. Giving proper message to the proper audience was a big challenge. And, information scarcity made it impossible as the pandemic is new for this generation. When the broadcast journalism was impacted globally, Bangladesh was also adversely impacted. Private television channels have failed to deliver messages for all types of audiences. There is a serious concern whether the audience was analyzed properly before preparing a message. On the other hand the journey of broadcast journalism in Bangladesh is not smooth at all. From the very beginning broadcast journalism has had to face a lot of challenges and obstacles to ensure its existence in the media industry. Television journalism faces pressures either from political -financial sectors or in the question of freedom of expression. Beside this it has the biggest difficulty or challenge in delivering news, because television journalism does not have much scope to go deeper. Even there is no opportunity to make detailed or analytical, rigorous reports. Moreover, in recent period social media plays an active role in media industry, but still there is no alternative of television media. So television journalism will clearly not die down soon.