Little candle in darkness
Congratulations on your little magazine - Star Insight! Its excellent stories are of a kind that rarely penetrate the pages of the main newspaper. Of course, bad things happen and we need to know about them but when I open Star Insight I feel, “This is the real Bangladesh!”
We read of people who, when faced with apparently insuperable obstacles, get stuck into some project, bringing a better and more hopeful life to many. They may be founding a local library, or, recently, like Ismat Ara, 'stitching poverty away', but when the right ingredients come together, there is joy, satisfaction, learning and hope for the future - though not without hard work and personal sacrifice which is a truth we all need reminding of!
It is printed on the poorest quality newspaper indicating that, unlike 'Lifestyle', advertisers do not think that possible future customers are interested in such stories - indicating the opinion that advertisers have of us! In my life-time, I have seen the shocking decline of standards (and thus a totally false impression of 'western culture') because so many media outlets have become devoted to selling audiences to such advertisers.
I remember the UK, before commercial television, when, instead of 80 channels of usually poor quality programmes, there were two BBC channels, both so excellent that you did not know which to watch. At peak time, documentaries and community programmes educated my whole generation on issues of poverty, disability and other major social responsibility issues that most advertisers, ever out of touch with the real world, consider not 'cool' enough for them…
Long may The Daily Star go on resisting such pressures! God bless Star Insight - a little candle in a naughty world!
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