Friday, June 25, 2010

PAKISTANI MEDIA - ADVENTUROUS
As the media claims to be in the aging towards 'maturity', the most obvious of all the 'norms' in the print & electronic media is the 'bashing'! You bash, you score! The better you bash, the higher is your score. Abundantly blessed with the corrupt officials in the government, the journalists of our society have somehow accustomed with the ecstacy of enticing the sentiments of people through firy lines and phrases which is less of reporting & more of opinions.

I remember once there was this public interactive program on one of the big news channels, where the host asks the reporter if he could name some other people accompanying the then just politician & now president , to the US embassy. The senior 'vibrant' reporter, interrupted by the question in delivering his speech, was found clueless about the answer.

As understood by the most of us, journalism is a job of 'informing the people about the happenings and events impartially & responsibly', nothing less, nothing more. Having this in mind, there surely remains no room to add unnecessary adjectives to the very definition of journalism. You can easily find people on TV trying to make their point that they should be let loose and express whatever they observe, be it their opinions. Obviously, such discretion or free will could be 'bought' as well. Therefore, it is not in the bet interests of the society to let the most powerful source of information (media) go wild with its own discretion to dispense or highlight whatever it deems fit. Biasness is a killer in journalism. For the common sense of any common man, it is a well established fact that human beings know when it is day or night. Similarly, if there is something fishy in a certain situation or a story, then people would know without getting it branded with flashy comments. There is no need of playing 'serials' of politically sentimental sessions, engulfing the people so that they could feel better & get entertained by watching 'WHO-GETS-BASHED-TONIGHT' shows. Not to forget, out of an hour program you hardly see 20-25 minutes of the content. The rest is all commercials.

If a layman like me can find the way from starting the 'responsibility-&-freedom-of-speech' campaign to the lustrous side of the picture i.e. maximiznig profits, then aren't these business tycoons much smarter while heading the undisputed media entities? Of course, they are.

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