Hi Emily,
I am a student in your International Reporting class and since the beginning of this semester, I have wanted to cover Bangladesh as my beat. My fellow classmate, Brandon, is also covering Bangladesh so in order to add more diversity into our reporting, I wanted to take a different angle. Brandon wants to cover the corruption surrounding and within Bangladesh’s government, which specifically impacts the country’s press freedoms as well as labor rights. Taking on the angle of what local Bengali immigrants think of the country’s government is great, but I want to focus on those who are not even aware of what is going on in their country.
When I was doing my beat memo, I myself was not aware of half the information I came across about my country. After that, I decided to visit Ozone Park where there are many Bengali immigrants. I went around asking people if they could tell me the current state of their country and only 1 person out of 20 was able to tell me what was going on. This was very eye-opening for me.
So far, I have conducted 3 interviews: a 23-year-old man whose family moved here from Bangladesh when he was 3; a 54 year-old woman whose parents live back in Bangladesh; a 17-year-old who was born and raised in New York, but his parents are immigrants from Bangladesh.
Each individual had a different viewpoint on Bangladesh and had different levels of knowledge on the state of the country. It was shocking to me how out-of-touch some of us with our own country and roots.
I want to do more interviewing and focus on the fact that a lot of Bengalis do not know what is going on in their country. Had more people been aware of the country’s state, maybe a lot more could be done to fight back the powers that are oppressing the people and the country.
I look forward to hearing from you and getting your feedback on this angle.
-Tafannum (Taf)