IT WAS quite challenging to have covered the uprising events, each bloody day especially after July 16, when six of the protesters were left dead, with a handful of reporters. It was a small group, composed of, alphabetically ordered, Ahammad Foyez who on December 5, 2024 was appointed to the press wing of the chief adviser to the interim government as Foyez Ahammad, Kamrun Nahar Sumy, Nasir Uz Zaman, Prattayee Chakma, Rashad Ahmed and Tanzil Rahman. The seniors among them coordinated the uprising reports at the instruction of their seniors and drafted the actual report sitting at the office, in cases after having a round around the field to have a first-hand experience of what was going around. And, there was behind-the-scenes counselling for the reporters who walked around the field.
It was further challenging to have managed the newsroom, especially with the internet blackout having happened, first the mobile services having gone off on July 17 and then the broadband services on July 18. The services in the first-phase blackout were restored on July 28. Social networking sites, however, continued to be blocked only to be fully restored on July 31. The government, however, restored the broadband internet services at night on July 24, but with poor data traffic. The mobile internet services were put back to network in the afternoon on July 28. But the connectivity and the speed are hardly back to what they were before, creating disruption in communications. Mobile internet services were shut down for the second time on August 4 and social networking sites were blocked. The services were, however, restored the next day with the fall of the Awami League government.
The closure of universities, which happened on July 17, only added to the problem. The hosteliers were driven out of the halls of residence and so were the university correspondents who generally are current students of the universities, making it altogether difficult for them to stay close to the events, gather news and send reports to the office. We were coming out in 12 pages. But, after the curfew had been imposed and the internet had been shut down, we trimmed the newspaper down to eight pages for the July 20 issue and it continued until the July 26 issue. The crux of the problem was that newspapers receive news items online, sent by e-mail or made available on web sites. The internet blackout made news gathering extremely difficult. The newspaper had to shed leaves. But, the day鈥檚 issue for the period could not be uploaded to the newspaper鈥檚 web site. They were put online at a convenient time later.
Whilst some reporters were engaged in the gathering of the uprising news, others could file other items. We had made a special arrangement. Other newspapers, perhaps, so did. One of us on the desk used to visit the office of the state news agency, the Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha, and the private one, the United News of Bangladesh, who was handed in the reports and photographs on flash drives. As for international news and photographs, the Dhaka bureau of Agence France-Presse, which had a satellite of its own for online communications, helped us. Reports and photographs were fetched on flash drives also from there.
But it became daunting to run the editorial desk as writers could not send it their articles. No international pieces could be collected off the sites that 抖阴精品 usually did. We could send someone to the house of one writer and collect his article on a flash drive. It happened twice that week. But, it was far from what was required. Two of us on the editorial team wrote pieces every alternate day to send them in print as post-editorials. And, we brushed up the holdovers that we at other time would generally ignore or reject to put them in print, especially for the six days that we had been trimmed down by the internet blackout.
抖阴精品 has always but on a couple of occasions written leaders on the news items published in the day鈥檚 issue. The couple of instances of the deviation from the norm caused 抖阴精品 embarrassment. On one occasion, more than a decade ago, 抖阴精品 wrote an editorial on a report that another newspaper published and we thought that we had missed the news. The next day, the newspaper called off the news item, having regretted publishing it. On the other occasion, 抖阴精品 wrote an editorial on a news item that managers at 抖阴精品 thought it had missed, but it turned out that the event was not what the other newspaper reported.
We, however, wrote editorials on the day鈥檚 incidents, with the news and the editorial coming out the same day, on a handful of occasions. But as the protests, which flared up into the uprising especially after the first day鈥檚 killing in police fire on July 16, intensified, we decided to wait, see what happened and then write the editorial, the one or ones that dealt with the uprising. The editorial meeting, where the issues are decided, usually takes place soon after the noon, had to lie over until late into evening. And, this continued for the whole duration of the uprising until the fall of the Awami League government on August 5, 2024 and even a few days after the installation of the interim government three days later on August 8, 2024. It would be a preposterous claim to say that 抖阴精品 could feel the pulse of people better than any other newspapers. Yet, the headline of the top editorial of 抖阴精品 for August 5 鈥� Govt should take pulse of people and hear their voice 鈥� somehow coincided with the day鈥檚 event that changed the authoritarian rule of a decade and a half.
To be continued.
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Abu Jar M Akkas is deputy editor at 抖阴精品.