Monday, 19 January 2015

Death of Journalism


I don't really watch television anymore. In fact, I haven't sat in front of a TV for more than 10 mins for years now. All my news and updates come from the internet. Recently I read a research which says that watching TV can substantially lower your IQ levels. In 2011, Researchers at the University of California found that watching TV produces less brain activity than staring at a blank wall. Well, I say even watching Pakistani TV's video clips on the internet can do that because they too are filled with the same baloney. Examples?
Let's talk about which political party is best. Let's go sit on Islamabad's roads. Let's bring the government down. Let's speak like the Riddler, it will be an interesting way to read the news. Let's call a few politicians and put them in a fight. Oh Imran Khan is getting married, let's do a background check on Reham Khan (even Imran himself wouldn't have gone into that much of detail ! ) Every problem of our country is an opportunity for an entrepreneur. GEO network became popular as it showed the aspects of our society which PTV covered up. Now it only fills our population with hatred, sectarian violence, love for everything that deviates us from our own culture, let alone our religion.

After watching videos like this, I have to say that I am really ashamed that this is what our media and journalism has come down to. TV commercials work, they get us to spend more. For every 10 hours of TV we watch, we spend $40 more than we otherwise would. All our journalists are doing is using words like:
Truth Revealed…
Corruption Discovered…
You will not believe your eyes…
Never seen before anywhere…
Surprising facts found…
Why? Because they bring visitors to site and increase ad revenue of websites. No value of our time and energy. The bias-ness, non-professional attitude, absence of communication skills and hunger for a news story can make these people do anything.

Pakistani youth is far more talented than that. Our media is underselling us and the irony is that they make us feel pathetic about ourselves and earn money through it. A while ago I watched this YouTube video labeled and uploaded by an Indian as something like "shame on PIA ..." the anchor person had zero information regarding aviation and PIA yet he had the guts to interview PIA employees and shout at them.  He literally harassed the PIA employees who were looking at each other helplessly as they had no answers. When American TV channel shows Islamabad as a slum and Pakistani people as militant lovers in their TV serial, "Homeland", we are so eager to blame them while we are doing the same thing ourselves. These journalists do no any kind of homework and just run into the field. I have seen news which says in headline that a PAF trainer aircraft crashed in Baluchistan while the pictures show a JF-17 or F-16. Why? Because if you Google PAF, you will find those pics on top. Same goes for incidents which PIA. They show a 747 in news of 737. In my own university there are many quality students of mass communication. Can't our media find and employee them? Employ the people with the right professional attitude, degrees and knowledge. There are good people alive even today e.g. the host of the famous “Dada Pota Show" Mr. Rizwan Rizi. They should be taken as good examples.


While we are at it, why don't we get our journalist's degrees verified? They sell us stories which most of our population approves of and spends hours of their time listening to. We use highly expensive electricity to power our devices for that and we reserve the right to know the news authenticity.
 Why are we not validating them?  
What is this going on while our authorities sleep? You can ban the movie PK as it has a kissing scene but you will allow anti Pakistan movies made by Bollywood to be shown in our own cinemas and cable network? Are bikinis and sleeveless shirts our national dresses which are being shown in the commercials? If not, why are our authorities showing this stuff to our society in cinemas and TVs? We have to rethink why our ancestors suffered, fought and bleed for a free Islamic republic where all religions and cultures will be protected by us Muslims. Do we really want our coming generations to be led off course in the name of modernism?

Well, I don't think so. And I am standing up for it. Do you agree?