14 different prizes were up for grabs during yesterday’s First Annual Media Awards. Of them, I was especially interested in seeing who would bag the prize for the best editorial of the year. Editorials, after all, are important: they express a newspaper’s stand or opinion on issues. And editorials are powerful: many readers, especially in rural Bhutan, accept, without any questions, the opinions expressed in the editorials as the truth.
So who was awarded the prize? The prize was awarded to not one, not two, but three journalists representing the three main newspapers in our country – Kuensel, Bhutan Observer and Bhutan Times.
What does this mean? That the editorials, one from each of our three leading papers, were equally good. Or that the editorials, one from each of our three leading papers, were equally bad. Or that the judges, appointed by and paid for by the government, were guided by considerations other than quality of the editorial.