<B>By Deepa BHOOKHUN</B>

News headline; bakers threaten to go on strike as at midnight.It?s Sunday afternoon, you hear this on the radio. What do you do? Usually if you want to get the details, it would make sense to wait until the evening news on TV to know more about the matter. So you wait?a long wait.

Which was what I did. At 19 h 30, I sat down in front of my TV and waited to hear the news. And waited? and watched the clock ticking. The news starts with the horrendous crime at Lallmatie, then go on to report on what a neighbourhood watch is. Then it?s another report on the Pravasi Divas. Next is singer Pankaj Udas. Then it?s the start of the new school year. O.K. now I?m starting to lose patience.

Item number 6 is the introduction of ADSL in schools and hopefully soon in post offices. I?m just about to turn the TV off as I remember that the Um? clever people at the MBC had actually mentioned the bread news in the headlines so I try and calm down.

Next one, I think. Oh but no. Next one down is about student bus passes. Then? it?s a report on the weather (who cares if there?s actually a slot dedicated to weather news after the 19h30 news!) Item number nine is some report on some youth programme. (I didn?t listen because I was livid by then.)

And then?oh relief! The clever people who decide on the hierarchy of news at the Mauritius Broadcasting for Imbeciles finally decide to air THE news of the day.

A news item of prime and national importance that an entire country had been waiting for. At 19 h 50. It is then that those who hadn?t been listening to news bulletins on private radios learn the very insignificant detail that they might not be able to buy bread from their corner shops at their regular times.

Now, don?t lose hope. Apart from the fact that we may or may not have private television in the not too distant future (fingers crossed), it seems a little fairy visited the MBC the other day and changed a few things for the better. I hear through the grapevine that people are being nicer to one another and the directive is now to try and act as normal people and not as members of enemy tribes.

So this is a plea to the little fairy; would you please get involved again (even though you shouldn?t and I shouldn?t ask) and make that phone call to whoever is responsible for the news and tell them that we are not a nation of retards?

And that they are embarrassing themselves by acting the way they are? And that they are reflecting badly on my country, its people and its government?

People watch the news because they want to know what is happening in the country. They do not necessarily want to know what minister Tom, minister Dick and minister Harry did during the day. Unless it is of prime importance, unless it has news value. Unfortunately not everything that a man who travels in a government owned Merc does has news value. Is this that hard to comprehend?