Media scene of Pakistan in pampers & its leaking.
Some of the Media outlets in Pakistan are still off the air since the hard stance the Government of Pakistan took on the Media industry in October 07. A lot of perspectives came out since the imposition of the state of emergency and some of the journalists, producers and activists went out on the streets of Pakistan protesting against Musharraf's actions against the media. But its surprising that no one ever talked about why the media was being scrutinized by the same person who gave all the freedoms to it.
The fact is that the Pakistani media industry can be compared to a little baby whose pamper is leaking with too many holes in it, and the baby doesn't even know about it. It is shocking to observe how and what the media in Pakistan has been playing on their air-waves. From pieces of dead bodies, to blown up heads, all the worse that you can ever imagine was being shown on Pakistani media, eventually desensitizing the audience to bloodshed, murder and mayhem. They say that media is reflecting the current society and the government, but the question is that medias job is not only to portray the current trends of a society but also to change them for the better.
But how can anyone do something like that when they themselves don't know how to do it? Not even once from the lobby controlled media scene have we seen a positive approach to the crisis situation in Pakistan, since the day networks have been allowed to broadcast their free will. Mostly there has been criticisms and zero solutions. Majority of the Television anchors are young kids, the program hosts are ill mannered and under prepared promotion hungry blabber mouths that just keep rambling about things totally unrelated to the future and progress of Pakistan. Face promotion is what most of the television media community is pushing for on-air.
The management, marketing and programing divisions have no strategic or moral sense of how to market whatever, wherever, to whom and at what time, as if its a non stop donkey race going on to win the hearts and minds of the innocent people of Pakistan who mostly have nothing else to do but watch the crazy political and ever democratic situation in Pakistan, made only worse by her own baby media. After the airwaves got shut down and our TV program was not on the air anymore, we went Live on radio and most of the callers calling us from Pakistan, the interior rural Pakistan were complaining that they have lost all their entertainment since the channels got shut down. Not one caller talked about what they were getting out of the media, it seemed as if a long awaited emotionally placed drama serial had just ended abruptly.
No one complained about missing news but the entertainment aspect of the news. In fact people missed watching how the politicians are invited on to the shows and insulted and abused, while the anchors feel proud on this baseless questioning, or how sex hungry commercials flood the airwaves or how not even one channel talked about making things better in Pakistan, no, none of that was missed because it never existed. Even the politicians themselves, most of them have nothing to do with enhancing the political environment of the country, no one trained or educated enough to handle core issues that can improve the livelihood of their own people. Imagine this, news for the audience was entertainment not information, because of the way it was being packaged. Guests coming on air, while they scratch their testicles in front of the cameras, hosts acting like referees and real estate agents and drug mafia brokers, trying to make the 2 parties fight rather than bringing to them a one cohesive point of view, or simply standing at different points of view but in a decent humane manner.
That happens when the media industry is being run by rice exporters and stock brokers because they start treating all the content as if its some sort of a commodity that you can black market or just stock in pile, the real news and its message just totally lost somewhere in between. And obviously they hire human resource that are just as dumb as the owners of these media outlets, so what execution? With no laws of broadcasting and ethics in place, wild dogs left out to rule the streets, bad mouthing, disregarding and disgracing their own people, if the media industry wants to be the watchdog over the Government, then who's watching the media? They need to be taught real and authentic broadcasting, help educate and uplift their people and guide them so the channels could be bearable and viewable in order to develop an educated, intelligent, thought provoking audience that can not only reflect but can also think?
I wonder when that day will come?
The fact is that the Pakistani media industry can be compared to a little baby whose pamper is leaking with too many holes in it, and the baby doesn't even know about it. It is shocking to observe how and what the media in Pakistan has been playing on their air-waves. From pieces of dead bodies, to blown up heads, all the worse that you can ever imagine was being shown on Pakistani media, eventually desensitizing the audience to bloodshed, murder and mayhem. They say that media is reflecting the current society and the government, but the question is that medias job is not only to portray the current trends of a society but also to change them for the better.
But how can anyone do something like that when they themselves don't know how to do it? Not even once from the lobby controlled media scene have we seen a positive approach to the crisis situation in Pakistan, since the day networks have been allowed to broadcast their free will. Mostly there has been criticisms and zero solutions. Majority of the Television anchors are young kids, the program hosts are ill mannered and under prepared promotion hungry blabber mouths that just keep rambling about things totally unrelated to the future and progress of Pakistan. Face promotion is what most of the television media community is pushing for on-air.
The management, marketing and programing divisions have no strategic or moral sense of how to market whatever, wherever, to whom and at what time, as if its a non stop donkey race going on to win the hearts and minds of the innocent people of Pakistan who mostly have nothing else to do but watch the crazy political and ever democratic situation in Pakistan, made only worse by her own baby media. After the airwaves got shut down and our TV program was not on the air anymore, we went Live on radio and most of the callers calling us from Pakistan, the interior rural Pakistan were complaining that they have lost all their entertainment since the channels got shut down. Not one caller talked about what they were getting out of the media, it seemed as if a long awaited emotionally placed drama serial had just ended abruptly.
No one complained about missing news but the entertainment aspect of the news. In fact people missed watching how the politicians are invited on to the shows and insulted and abused, while the anchors feel proud on this baseless questioning, or how sex hungry commercials flood the airwaves or how not even one channel talked about making things better in Pakistan, no, none of that was missed because it never existed. Even the politicians themselves, most of them have nothing to do with enhancing the political environment of the country, no one trained or educated enough to handle core issues that can improve the livelihood of their own people. Imagine this, news for the audience was entertainment not information, because of the way it was being packaged. Guests coming on air, while they scratch their testicles in front of the cameras, hosts acting like referees and real estate agents and drug mafia brokers, trying to make the 2 parties fight rather than bringing to them a one cohesive point of view, or simply standing at different points of view but in a decent humane manner.
That happens when the media industry is being run by rice exporters and stock brokers because they start treating all the content as if its some sort of a commodity that you can black market or just stock in pile, the real news and its message just totally lost somewhere in between. And obviously they hire human resource that are just as dumb as the owners of these media outlets, so what execution? With no laws of broadcasting and ethics in place, wild dogs left out to rule the streets, bad mouthing, disregarding and disgracing their own people, if the media industry wants to be the watchdog over the Government, then who's watching the media? They need to be taught real and authentic broadcasting, help educate and uplift their people and guide them so the channels could be bearable and viewable in order to develop an educated, intelligent, thought provoking audience that can not only reflect but can also think?
I wonder when that day will come?
posted by Imran Siddiqui at 12:40 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home