Award winning Indian Composer Urges Media Responsibility
- 14 years ago
Academy award-winning Indian composer A.R. Rahman is in Australia to perform a free outdoor concert in Sydney at the weekend.
Relations between Australia and India have been strained over attacks on Indian students in the nation, most recently the fatal stabbing of a student in Melbourne early this month.
Tensions grew after an Indian newspaper then depicted an Australian police officer in a Ku Klux Klan costume, after police had denied the attack was racially motivated.
Rahman, best known outside India for his award winning soundtrack for the "Slumdog Millionaire" film, urged the media to be responsible when reporting incidents.
[A. R. Rahman, Indian Composer]:
"First of all, we need more responsible media. Media is a great tool but it can also be misused and provoke people. Just one wrong news can kill a thousand people. That happened in the past and we have to be extremely careful
and strict about the truth. I think, I was speaking to a lot of people, they were saying that some of them are racial killing and some of them are not, but everything is being painted in the same colour and we have to be very careful
about that."
Rahman hopes his concert which is expected to draw a crowd of up to 75,000, will build a bridge between the two countries.
[A. R. Rahman, Indian Composer]:
"And this concert is about, again, reaffirming the friendship and the interest of both people, and I hope this concert brings that and I am sure it will."
A recent report said attacks on Indian students in Australia last year would cost the country's related businesses around $70 million, with predictions Indian enrollments would fall by 21 percent this year.
Relations between Australia and India have been strained over attacks on Indian students in the nation, most recently the fatal stabbing of a student in Melbourne early this month.
Tensions grew after an Indian newspaper then depicted an Australian police officer in a Ku Klux Klan costume, after police had denied the attack was racially motivated.
Rahman, best known outside India for his award winning soundtrack for the "Slumdog Millionaire" film, urged the media to be responsible when reporting incidents.
[A. R. Rahman, Indian Composer]:
"First of all, we need more responsible media. Media is a great tool but it can also be misused and provoke people. Just one wrong news can kill a thousand people. That happened in the past and we have to be extremely careful
and strict about the truth. I think, I was speaking to a lot of people, they were saying that some of them are racial killing and some of them are not, but everything is being painted in the same colour and we have to be very careful
about that."
Rahman hopes his concert which is expected to draw a crowd of up to 75,000, will build a bridge between the two countries.
[A. R. Rahman, Indian Composer]:
"And this concert is about, again, reaffirming the friendship and the interest of both people, and I hope this concert brings that and I am sure it will."
A recent report said attacks on Indian students in Australia last year would cost the country's related businesses around $70 million, with predictions Indian enrollments would fall by 21 percent this year.