Accidents and media coverage
THIS refers to recent tragic incident wherein a young man jumped to his death from the eighth floor of a building in Karachi to save himself from fire that had erupted on that floor.
Owais’s death posed terrible picture of our society. When he was hanging from the building and was struggling for his life many people were standing under the building, including rescue workers, media and common people. They all were watching Owais hanging from the window but nobody stepped forward and offered help to him. At last he could not balance himself in that position, fell on the ground and died.
His death raises many questions for the whole nation. First, it challenges the capacity of our rescue institutions. If we cannot save a person hanging for more then 10 minutes, how can we rescue people trapped in a building on fire.
Besides, our so-called responsible media, instead of helping the man, telecast the whole gruesome episode live. And the saddest point of this episode was that these TV news channels repeatedly showed that incident, without thinking how the family of the young man would bear this footage on news channels.
I request the government to prepare draft of ethics for TV channels and inspect all major buildings of the country to see if measures have been taken for fire safety.
ZAHID RASHID
Rawalakot, Azad Kashmir
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