Journalism or Jingoism?

Among the multiple roles played by media, the most important one is to enable readers make intelligent choices.

It should act on truth because it stands on the side of millions of people who anticipate and rely on it. The creativity of the media people should be used at calling a spade a spade without sounding too blunt, if the situation demands and allows.

Is Media serving this purpose?

Today media, specially the TV media has become so much commercialized that people are creating news by themselves (sting operation) to be in the forefront in media competition.

"A man throwing stones on north Indian students”,”One person hurling stones on a taxi”, “the taxi driver is shown running away from getting beaten" all this is shown in steps again and again. This only induces violence.

TV headlines scream “Mumbai Burning”, “Attack on North Indians”, “Kaun hai asli maharashtrian” and all like that. TV news channels are relentlessly bombarding Indian homes with images of 4 stray incidents that happened two days and ago and repeating it for one million times in each and every channel.

Last year when enemy hit us badly and we could not find time for remorse, the media was at its peak of jingoism cum emotionalism rather then their professionalism. ‘Excess of everything is bad’ the issue was totally hijacked and sensationalized.

During internal communal outbursts like Babri-masjid demolition and Gujarat riots media is used as a battle ground for political frustration, imperialistic hegemony, human right violation and invasion of sovereignty and privacy.

The young children whose imaginations are still a vast blank landscape are gradually getting cultured to violence. Nowadays children play ‘encounter games’ instead of the good old hide-and-seek. When I asked a three years old who has just started the basic A, B, C…to read out the newspaper for me, she starts right away with “2 people gunned down and killed”. So one can well imagine the impact our daily news has on tender minds.

At this point the question arises on role of the media, what is the purpose of those news channels. Sensationalizing even a trivial issue to a national scale creates further trouble across other regions.

Well said: Power brings responsibility with it.

The power vest on media should always go hand in hand with the responsibility towards the people. Freedom of expression should never forsake the unwritten law of responsibility.

Media should have a focus on education, instead of merely trying to entertain their listeners and viewers with the highlights of serials like Rakhi Ka Svayambar and Big Boss. They have to focus on social responsibility and respect media ethics in order to satisfy the public.

Media is a mighty institution wielding enormous powers and liability to the society, which are expected to be exercised for the protection and well-being of the people and limited.