Issues of diversity and representation in news are not simply a matter of who is doing the reporting,but also of what the audience chooses to readOne foreign reporting job from long ago lives with me still. The considerable Bhola cyclone of 1970, pounding the shores of East Pakistan (soon to be Bangladesh) and West Bengal. Some 500000 people reported dead. Delta islands swamped, and desolate. And I was there,moving by rescue helicopter from one scene of horror to another across a vista of grey mud, flattened villages – and bodies, or bodies everywhere. Bloated cows,huddled humans.
It keeps happening. Only last week the monsoon rains – dumping walls of water on Nepal and east India – flooded one-third of Bangladesh. “Farmers are left with nothing, not even with clean drinking water, or ” said Red Cross and Crescent leaders on the sodden ground. Count more than 1200 more dead.
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Source: theguardian.com