Difficult Stories Must Be Told

Devon Stephen
ds708914@ohio.edu
COVERING DIFFICULT STORIES with Tania Rashid

Who is Tania Rashid?

Tania Rashid
Photo courtesy of Tania Rashid's Twitter profile

Tania Rashid is a PBS correspondent and film producer who grew up in Saudi Arabia. She spent the later years of her childhood in Bangladesh, but corruption and political instability led her family to make the move to Utah, USA. Rashid explained that growing up in three very isolating areas inspired her to earn her B.A. in history and global studies at the University of California Los Angeles. Realizing she wanted more from her career, Rashid decided to get her masters in broadcast journalism and take on an additional thesis in filmmaking. To prove herself talented enough for the documentary program, Rashid created a piece that followed the life of an undocumented citizen after being released from detention. After being brought in to the program, Rashid made a piece on her own identity and its many layers—layers she didn’t even realize existed. After two successful theses, it became clear to Rashid that she was meant to use her diverse cultural background, passion for helping others, and skills in journalism to make a difference in lives across the globe.

Although we lead completely different lives, I feel a connection to Rashid’s story. I’m inspired by her efforts to make the world a better place by informing the rest of the world of the injustices and atrocities happening in more isolated areas such as South Africa and Bangladesh. Rashid’s documentary-style journalism is captivating and influential, and I believe all journalism students should watch and listen.

Skin Bleaching Scandal in South Africa | Unreported World

Some of the skin bleaching products sold illegally
in South Africa

Watching Rashid’s journalistic work in the Unreported World documentary on South Africa’s skin bleaching epidemic (2018) was shocking. I watch every episode of The Daily Show, hosted by South African comedian Trevor Noah, and thought I was partially up-to-date on South African issues. When I watched Rashid’s production tonight, I realized I was utterly clueless about what must go on in that part of the world. One of my biggest takeaways from the film was that Rashid uses her own experiences as “a dark-skinned Bangladeshi” to relate to the people in South Africa who are using the skin whitening/ bleaching products. By talking about the social pressures she faced in her own life she was able to add a more personal component to the film. Rashid doesn’t cross ethical boundaries by touching on her own experiences because she only uses them as a reference. To obtain a non-biased perspective for this film, Rashid talks to a college student who actively used skin whitening products. She is able to relate to his desire for a lighter complexion but doesn’t let her own experiences overshadow his opinion or explanations. Furthermore, Rashid goes to the extent of speaking with a South African celebrity who endorsed skin bleaching products. While she speaks gently with the college student using them, her questions for the celebrity endorser are slightly more accusatory. In this documentary Rashid demonstrates her abilities to both empathize with interviewees and refuse to let them off the hook. She recites facts, asks important questions and holds those who should be held responsible for their actions to high ethical standards. The skin bleaching epidemic in South Africa, a region of Africa with a disturbingly racist past and present, is a difficult story to cover. The illegality of the skin whitening and bleaching products only add to the difficulty in getting information from endorsers and shop owners who sell the products. However difficult, Rashid continues to expose the illegal sale of the products and share stories of the inherent and systematic racism which leads to their high number of purchases.

Toxic Tanneries Poisoning Workers in Bangladesh | Vice News

Rashid interviewing a Bangladeshi woman in the
river contaminated by tannery poisons

Toxic Tanneries Poisoning Workers in Bangladesh (2015) shows Rashid in her travel to Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, as she visits the tannery district in one of the most polluted places on Earth—the city’s Hazaribagh neighborhood. There she investigates the conditions in which people producing the leather (worth a billion dollars a year as an industry) work. The documentary shows people, some children, working barefooted in chemicals with containers labeled as highly poisonous. In the first minute of the documentary, Rashid reveals that 90% of workers in the industry die before the age of 50. The industry is also responsible for polluting the country’s water. I found this documentary especially interesting for two seemingly trivial reasons: Rashid’s clothing is culturally respectful and natural, and she is able to use the shared language to communicate with the people she interviews. I believe having reporters who are from the regions, countries or cities where they investigate is crucial in gaining the best understanding and sharing the most accurate information possible. I doubt that the people affected by the water pollution or deadly working conditions would share the same stories with me, a white journalist, as they did with a woman from their country. Watching Rashid explain the sickness the people who live on the river in which the chemicals are dumped turned my stomach and touched my heart. The children she interviewed explained that the fish they catch are sold in markets where everyday people buy them to eat. Seeing the children fishing in boats on the essentially poisonous river filled me with rage—which I believe is the goal of her work. Sharing that story was dangerous because how large-scale the leather industry is. Rashid's ability to get the story out to the public shows her not just her skills in filmmaking, but her ethically valuable dedication to sharing the stories that no one wants to tell.

Pimps and traffickers prey on vulnerable Rohingya girls | PBS News Hour

While the other documentaries Rashid shared with us were upsetting and inspiring of social and political reform, the final documentary on sex trafficking in Bangladesh (2018) was truly disturbing. Rashid explains in the film that Rohingya refugees, mostly girls and women without fathers or husbands, are recruited by men looking to make quick cash in the Bangladeshi sex trade. The girls and women are often poor without means of making money. Each night, Bangladeshi soldiers invade cars and ask young women for identification cards to prove they are Bangladeshi. If the girls are Rohingya, the soldiers ask for the name of their refugee camp leader and force them to exit the vehicle. Within the camps there are brothels, which look the same as ordinary shelters, where sex work goes on. One woman in the documentary started sex work to pay for food for her children. She said she earns two to six dollars for 15 minutes to an hour of sex work.

15-year-old Rohingya sex worker interviewed by Rashid

Another Rohingya sex worker interviewed in the documentary, a 15-year-old girl who fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar, described the violent torture and mutilation of a woman near while in the possession of Myanmar soldiers. The girl was beaten, stabbed, hung from a tree, bitten, gang-raped, stabbed and dumped into a river. Her story is hard to hear, even though we are spared the gruesome details. After surviving the abuse and escaping across the river to Bangladesh, the girl had to sell drugs to earn money to survive. She was caught and made to spend two months in jail. There, she made a friend who was actually a recruiter for the Bangladeshi sex trade. Now, she works seven days a week and earns one dollar per client. On the day of the interview, the girl was gang raped by five men in the same way the Myramar soldiers raped her. Hearing her story made me wonder just how many women are abused, raped, tortured and killed around the world. How many of their stories are told, and how many do we have to hear before we can help them?

Final thoughts

As a journalism student, I found Rashid’s work to be meaningful as well as morally and ethically responsible. As journalists we have a duty to the world to tell stories that are hard to hear. We owe it to both the people who are suffering and the people who could never relate to their pain. I believe we also have a responsibility to make people listen—without being biased. That is a hard line to draw though, isn’t it? Well, not really. Morally, there are universal rights and wrongs. I believe the majority of the world would agree that abuse of power and murder are wrong. Ethically there are rights and wrongs, too. By using journalism and filmmaking to share information, and speaking publicly to rally supporters, Rashid is both morally and ethically garnering attention for her work—work that absolutely should be recognized. By traveling the world to tell stories that are hard to tell, Rashid is doing work that matters. She is sharing stories and building a base on which others can stand to continue this kind of life-saving work.