Newspapers -- Redefine your mission statement
On a warm summer afternoon, my colleagues at UST and myself were at Coffee Beans, the eat out at Technopark, Trivandrum, when we were approached by a Malayalam daily. They had embarked upon a feedback venture. They wanted to know what we thought about their newspaper. My repsonse was that there was so much of violence and anti social events that are highlighted. Long after the interlude, the undesired reporting continues.
I have been going through the newspapers every day religiously for years and of late, I am afraid to open one. The reporting leaves me traumatised. A great medium of reporting is pounding the citizens with a lot of negative events that leaves us drained early in the morning.
While it is important to look at "profit" in business, there needs to be certain regulations that need to come into play especially when such news causes a trauma in the minds of people. There has been many a times debates on the influence of movies and today no one ever talks of the influence of newspapers that is slowly emerging to be a knowledge repository of modus operandi of many a violent act or many an anti social behaviour. I am not against highlighting these events, but such detailed reporting in the name of readership is perhaps not warranted.
This afteroon, I was talking to another colleague of mine at Mumbai and he was all praise of a news paper in Africa. He was talking about the standard of reporting and also the content. I was delighted to hear that.
It is a high time that the barons of mass media wake up and comprehend the damage their reporters do by indulging in such reporting. There are so many good things that happen in our country and the world over. Why do those events not hog so much limelight? It is just that we work with the gullible mind set of human beings and exploit it in the name of "profit making".
Reporters of the world ...please understand that we need to endeavour to reinforce good things and not the bad things. Let us attempt to create a better world by reducing the miserable content and increasing the more laudable and proud accomplishments that happen the world over. I might sound amateurish to a reporter who perhpas gets to read this. I do write down these lines after I have been observing what I have stated, for last 10 years. It only dampens the minds of people who really want to make this world a better place to live in.
I have been going through the newspapers every day religiously for years and of late, I am afraid to open one. The reporting leaves me traumatised. A great medium of reporting is pounding the citizens with a lot of negative events that leaves us drained early in the morning.
While it is important to look at "profit" in business, there needs to be certain regulations that need to come into play especially when such news causes a trauma in the minds of people. There has been many a times debates on the influence of movies and today no one ever talks of the influence of newspapers that is slowly emerging to be a knowledge repository of modus operandi of many a violent act or many an anti social behaviour. I am not against highlighting these events, but such detailed reporting in the name of readership is perhaps not warranted.
This afteroon, I was talking to another colleague of mine at Mumbai and he was all praise of a news paper in Africa. He was talking about the standard of reporting and also the content. I was delighted to hear that.
It is a high time that the barons of mass media wake up and comprehend the damage their reporters do by indulging in such reporting. There are so many good things that happen in our country and the world over. Why do those events not hog so much limelight? It is just that we work with the gullible mind set of human beings and exploit it in the name of "profit making".
Reporters of the world ...please understand that we need to endeavour to reinforce good things and not the bad things. Let us attempt to create a better world by reducing the miserable content and increasing the more laudable and proud accomplishments that happen the world over. I might sound amateurish to a reporter who perhpas gets to read this. I do write down these lines after I have been observing what I have stated, for last 10 years. It only dampens the minds of people who really want to make this world a better place to live in.
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