| ashu |
Posted
on 20-Nov-01 05:41 AM
What follows was first published in The Kathmandu Post in 1997.
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Dissecting an opinion piece in a Nepali newspaper.
by Bhupendra Rawat
I like reading opinion pieces and editorials (op-eds) that
appear in Kathmandu's daily and weekly newspapers. Some op-eds are stimulating. Others are as boring as the sex life of dead cockroach. But how do you tell which is which? Here is a helpful guide.
NEED-OF-THE-HOUR Op-eds
These are opinion pieces that treat every topic as though it deserved a need-of-the-hour urgency. "Eradicating poverty is the need of the hour" is one typical sentence.
"A national consensus on the Mahakali Treaty is the need of the hour if all political parties are to be united for desh ko bikas" is another example. Written usually by desperate NGO-wallahs in search of a gullible donor, or by lazy policy-pundits who face little or no peer criticism inside Nepal, these op-eds often go unread because, well, reading them usually isn't any reader's need of the hour.
THIS SHOULD HAPPEN/THAT SHOULD HAPPEN op-eds
Stating safe, common and risk-free truism is a style much favored by most Nepali PhD-daktar-shahebs and play-it-safe professionals. Often, a 'should op-ed' (usually found on the page four of The Rising Nepal English daily, to name one example!) takes no risks, contains no insightful or even reasonably disagreeable thoughts, and is usually as bland as boiled potatoes.
Two examples: "The government should uplift the poor", or "We should check against the bad influence of foreign TV channels". Rarely do these "Should-op-eds" tell you just HOW the government may uplift the poor, or just what's "bad" about the foreign channels.
SPECULATIVE op-eds
These are name-dropping op-eds that are basically high-class gossip passing off as serious journalism.
An example: "At a cocktail reception at the Indian Embassy yesterday, this scribe bumped into an Indian gentleman who thought that Nepal had gotten a fair deal on the Pancheswor Treaty. From this, it is clear that the South Block views the Treaty as being fair to Nepal."
Notice the gossip, the speculation and the jump to conclusions! Of course, no hard evidence or cogent argument is ever provided. Nepali journalists/columnists and scholars who hate homework, research and hard thinking usually take this cock-tail route to writing op-eds.
I-AM-REALLY-SMART op-eds:
These are textbook-ish op-eds on serious topics (i.e. politics, society and economics) -- written merely to show off the knowledge that the writers allegedly possess.
Readers are often urged to consult the -Journal of Interplanetary Economics- (Vol. IX, No. 3, page 226) or -The Mensa Quarterly- (Vol. LX, No. 6, page 90) for further elaboration of these writers' brilliant insight. The tone here is usually professorial, slightly condescending, but often delivered in a smarter-than-thou style.
I-ARGUE op-eds:
Ivy League hoodlums, who write as though they were out to
impress the Yale Law School admissions committee, publish argumentative op-eds. These arguers live, breathe and sleep arguments -- and love being controversial, even when they are talking about issues untouched by controversies. Ultimately, however, these 'I-argue op-eds' start to be annoying and irritating not only because of their prosecutorial prose but also because you always get only a small slice of any topic at the expense of a fuller discussion.
Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, now that you know the different categories of op-eds that exist, good luck in recognizing the ones you will continue to encounter in our daily and weekly newspapers. THE END
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