Nowadays when one watches news, all one gets is a serious dose of depression, anxiety and anger. The question arises,
- What is the news media doing?
- Are they following the code of ethics of media(journalism)?
- Is sensationalism and spicy gossip style news the right way to go?
- And is the media branding or debranding Pakistan?
In my opinion the question to all of the above questions is a big NO.
The news media of Pakistan although claims that it is only reporting the truth and nothing but the truth, is not doing what it claims, every channel has a certain pro attitude towards a certain political party or is pro or anti government. Now what the media does, specially the so called talk shows on air, are more of a verbal fight between people rather than arenas of intellectual debate, and each of those talk show hosts tows their own party line.That is quite evident if you look beyond the sensationalism and the emotional talk of no substance. Although the news media still despite all this has gems that remain true to what the news media should do within the bounds of the generally acceptable moral and ethical structure.
Before answering the other questions lets take a quick look at what are the basic elements of media ethics:
- News manipulation. News can manipulate and be manipulated. Governments and corporations may attempt to manipulate news media; governments, for example, by censorship, and corporations by share ownership. The methods of manipulation are subtle and many. Manipulation may be voluntary or involuntary. Those being manipulated maynot be aware of this.
This is being done all around the world, not just in my country but all around the world, and most of the time its so subtle that its hard to recognize it, unless you cross reference and check with various other sources.
- Truth. Truth may conflict with many other values.
- Public interest. Revelation of military secrets and other sensitive government information may be contrary to the public interest, even if it is true. The definition of public interest is hard.
- Privacy. Salacious details of the lives of public figures is a central content element in many media. Publication is not necessarily justified simply because the information is true. Privacy is also a right, and one which conflicts with free speech.
- Fantasy. Fantasy is an element of entertainment, which is a legitimate goal of media content. Journalism may mix fantasy and truth, with resulting ethical dilemmas.
- Taste. Photo journalists who cover war and disasters confront situations which may shock the sensitivities of their audiences. For example, human remains are rarely screened. The ethical issue is how far should one risk shocking an audience's sensitivities in order to correctly and fully report the truth.
They say that the truth shall set you free, but the question is can the people handle the truth, We have seen a lot of examples of these in the past where the media in a hurry to be the first to report "the truth" has reported something that was later found to be false, but the damage had been done, The damage we are talking about is psychological and on a greater level the very image of one's nation.
Talking about privacy, the biggest example would be the recent vulture like antics of our news media on the whole shoaib sania issue, I mean seriously famous people get married all the time, but the way it was handled here, well its nothing to be proud of.
Taste our media in its haste to be the first to break the news, and to create sensation and grab viewer ship often shows graphic images and videos, in fact if one watches our news media it gives the impression that we have a full scale war going in every inch of our country worse than Iraq which is not the case. All that is shown is suffering, anger, blood, gore and an animosity and animalistic depiction of people, which i am sorry to say is not who we are.
- Conflict with the law. Journalistic ethics may conflict with the law over issues such as the protection of confidential news sources. There is also the question of the extent to which it is ethically acceptable to break the law in order to obtain news.
It is this author's opinion that the news media here, and in many places around the world does not follow the code of ethics, although there are ethical dilemmas but some lines should not never be crossed.
Spicy and sectionalism is not the the right way do go, although the news sounds nice, but it has a negative impact on the general psyche of the populace, and the populace in general feels, anger, helplessness, frustration, all these feelings lead to various psychological problems and also make the common man susceptible to the brainwashing of extremist and trouble making elements of the society.
Another grave issue regarding all this is the damage the news media is doing to the already tarnished image of our country, the images being relayed on airwaves by the news channels the so called defenders of truth is portraying a country that is worse off than the poorest nation of Africa and more war torn than Iraq, but frankly my friends my friends that is a small portion of what Pakistan and its people are, when will the media start showing, the rich culture and history of our country? when will it show the beauty of Pakistan?
If the media will not show it then why can;t we the people of Pakistan show that picture of Pakistan as the historically and culturally rich country that it is to the world via the internet, yes we can yes we can, I am doing it, and so are many others, so why can;t you?
In the end I do accept that Ethics in journalism is an utopia, can never be applied in practice, but we can be as close to it as possible.
© 2010 posted by Mustafa Ali Khan Afreedi (DarkMystic)
