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Saturday, January 26, 2013

India - Media reporting and repercussions


There are two distinct parts of India as we see today -
one that dreams of becoming a superpower some day, one where the daughter of an auto rickshaw driver secures first rank in one of the most coveted exams, that of the CA, one where we proudly see some sort of slow and staggered development, one where analysts still maintain that we have a chance of surpassing many of the biggest economies of the world by 2050....

And there is another part of India that consists of separatists, losers, sex maniacs who are hellbent on deriving the pleasures of the moment with no regard whatsoever for the dignity of individuals or unity and integrity of the nation. UNFORTUNATELY, not many people know the name of the girl who topped the CA exams, but ask anyone - "Who raped the girl in Delhi?"... everyone knows!

THIS IS THE PROBLEM we have! We are making our villains famous and forgetting our heroes! When the US gun fire incidents occurred recently, Morgan Freeman had an interesting take. He said that we are making a sad nobody famous by flashing his names everywhere. Not many people know the name of the teacher who hid her students and saved them from the gunman! But everyone knows that gunman! Same with our media. They are hellbent on sensationalizing news and deriving more viewership. A news on rape probably grabs eyeballs right away, but a news on a patented invention by a certain IITian may be ignored by an average reader. At least that's what our media houses think!

That is something that even APJ Abdul Kalam mentioned in one of his speeches. This is what he said -

Why is the media here so negative? Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognize our own strengths, our achievements? We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them. Why? We are the first in milk production. We are number one in Remote sensing satellites. We are the second largest producer of wheat. We are the second largest producer of rice. Look at Dr. Sudarshan , he has transferred the tribal village into a self-sustaining, self-driving unit. There are millions of such achievements but our media is only obsessed in the bad news and failures and disasters.

And we are also falling into the same trap someway or the other. Negativity has its own blunt force, a ripple effect. It brings out more negativity. The Delhi rape and all repurcussions after it - candle light vigils, protests unfortunately did nothing to stop the brutal acts. WHY? Because, people who actually did it felt immortalized! People who have no potential of becoming heroes would rather become villains and be famous nationwide than live their whole lives like a loser and die like a sad "no body"! I do not say that is what they think before committing crimes, but that, definitely is one of the driving factors.

How about this?

Let our media report all incidents, but not flash the name of the criminal. Let the victim only be immortalized and the names of the criminals as well as all details about them be hidden, made classified information. If a Times of India article prints 3 bad news articles on the front page, let it also print 5 good news articles on the front page itself and not move to page 5 or 6. 

We do need positive vibes!

And friends... lets not feel ashamed of being an Indian due to all of these saddistic incidents.
We do have a collective responsibilty to rectify the situation! 

Let me become an audiophile for a moment and do some filtering on the "sound"... amplify the "purest of notes" and minimize the "noise." Keep doing it, till the "noise" causing elements feel demotivated and stop creating "noise" altogether! 

No, we do need all criminals to be punished, but lets not give them any sort of limelight and media attention. Trust me, they do not deserve it!