Why National Media Turned A Blind Eye To Cyclone FANI & Its Aftermath In Odisha | Odisha News
Bhubaneswar: At 8 am on May 3, extremely severe cyclonic storm ‘FANI’ made landfall in Odisha coast and left behind a trail of destruction in the State. At the same time, election season was in full swing in India. Instead of caring about the millions of people who were in the way of the Cyclone, national media assumed that people were apparently eager to know whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi eats mangoes, which politician is spewing hatred on minorities and what is the campaign schedule of big shots. So, they chose to show exactly that.
During the time of landfall, apart from two English news channels- CNN-News18 and NDTV- that were showing the process, no other channel (English or Hindi) had the slightest mention of the impending disaster. Due to connectivity issues, OMMCOM NEWS was not able to track the satellite channels after 8:30 am. Later in the night, NDTV India did an exclusive bulletin in ‘Ravish Ki Report’ talking about the Cyclone’s impact in Odisha. While there are at least 50 national channels, this was the extent of coverage.
“It shows our misplaced priorities. We are so obsessed with elections that we forgot the whole of Odisha, once the elections got over in the State on April 29. If Fani had occurred in Odisha during the elections, we might have given it more attention,” said Rajdeep Sardesai, senior journalist and consulting editor of India Today Group.
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