MEDIA IN CHECK

MEDIA IN CHECK

Yesterday, while going through my twitter feed, I came across a wonderful tweet, “You will realize that our country is not that in dirt as projected by our profit oriented media. Take a break from it for a while and you will understand.” Now of course due to number of characters’ limitation on a tweet, the original used some abbreviations, but that is not a point. Point is that it reflected the true vibrancy of situation, which our so called media choose to monochrome in the color which is more profitable to them.

India is a nation of 1.25 billion people. There exists always a fraction of population which are criminal minded, crooks, and of character that will put that of animals to shame. How big that portion is, what percentage is that out of the total pie, can be very well and effectively controlled by good and immersive governance, but cannot be eliminated at all.

Coming back to where we started, If I ask a very simple question, that how far would the rage of “intolerance” have spread, if our dear media has not put petrol in it? I guess the answer is unanimous.  That is just one logical question out of countless other situations in the recent past. Simply, if one leg of our democracy is accomplished by a superpower to make a billion people think in a single direction, it is no more a leg of support, and if there is an ideology of making money driving its movements, the results are ought to be catastrophic. And that catastrophe is what we are living in today.

It’s not wrong for media to touch sensitive topics, but in it’s true spirits, it should. The problem starts when they start taking sides, making conclusions and start forming biased judgments. That is not accepted, especially when your point of view can be the point of view of millions.

If there is a problem, there should be a solution. Well in that case it’s not that easy. It’s just like how we know that using fossil fuels every second is taking the environment closer to destruction at faster pace, but we continue to do so, mainly because we don’t have an alternative. In the case of media, lack of certain checks and regulations is the reason of complete contempt of responsibility from our media sources.

Yes! there is no arguing with the fact that imposing restrictions will favor those in power, but compared to what we are paying now for it, it’s a trade of a penny for a dollar. Freedom of speech and expression should be exercised in a boundary and in such a manner that it should not harm the cohesion and harmony of a country, and should not play with the national security.

Hoping for a day when we can really get news, not some masala tikka of a tragedy.