Media Guided Ignorance - Essay Example

Media Guided Ignorance It’s a fact of no dispute that day-by-day man acquires more knowledge. All men are in the never ending process of thinking every minute that the world passes through. Different people may think in different manner and on entirely different topics and issues. Whatever subject it may be; science, history, psychology, geography, etc. man is studying. In each subject, we are achieving more advanced level of knowledge through studies and research. As a result divisions and sub-divisions in a particular subject became relevant. Specialization in each sub division became a must to be an expert in concerned areas. Actually from this concept arose the saying: “A specialist is one who knows more and more about less and less”. An individual has enough freedom to take one’s own decision on going for specialization or not. But none has the choice of being a generalist or not. Minimum knowledge on all issues regarding day-to-day life and elaborately about the whole universe is a must for all human beings. Of course, there will be much difference in knowledge levels of men with different educational qualifications, different professions and those belong to different geographical areas. Here also, we can’t remain down beneath the bottom level. The basic reason is nothing but total ignorance makes a man unfit to survive. Men who know nothing about nothing won’t be in a position to respond even to the problems in their personal life. They will be having only suspicions and questions before all happenings in and around the world. This stage of never ending confusions will lead a person only to a stage where he becomes a laughing stalk before his own fellow beings. The prime purpose of primary education is to provide students the basic knowledge explained above. It will be very much clear if we closely examine the curriculum of primary education. In a nut shell, it is an attempt to create good awareness on our life which may also be explained as some sort of common sense. Thus, primary education can be sited as the foundation of a man’s success in life and it becomes the primary duty of the ruling powers to provide quality basic education to its citizens. But when we come to the case of World’s most developed nation, what we get is not a good picture. It is suspicious whether the authorities are bothering much about education. A retired CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite points out that teachers are highly underpaid. On CNN’s “Larry King Live” he said while speaking about teachers: “Now here are the people that we turn our children over to at the age of five or so. They are the most important people in their lives, probably more so than their parents in many cases unfortunately. But we pay them so little than they do as teachers for heaven’s sakes. We should be ashamed of ourselves.” (newsbusters.org/node) All professionals whether they may be in the fields like management, medicine, engineering, administrations are paid well. Promotions and pay hikes other also are very common in their case. When other professionals earn pretty good income the position of teaching community is not that safe. Authorities as well as US society forgets that the future of the nation is being molded by teachers and schools. Tomorrow’s youth is being trained by teachers. A well educated youth is inevitable for the growth of a nation. They are to lead the nation through the ups and downs in the coming decades. If leadership becomes weak what will be the fate of the No.1 nation? If the authority is not going to see the issue of quality education serious we can’t hope that US is going to remain the most powerful nation. All collective decisions including authoritative ones take birth in discussions. Social issues reflect in discussions at all levels of the society. The present states of affairs in the society, problems within it, etc. are hot issues in all man-to-man discussions. Even in informal chats such issues peep in. When a particular problem starts to create enough headaches we start to think of solutions also. This thinking process happens at all levels including administrative ones. Then collectively the society finds out a solution. But there should be some force to catalyze the thoughts of people so that it get streamlined and become effective. Here comes the role of media. Just like bed coffee or food, media is a good friend of man. A man’s day opens to dawn with news in the media. Whether it is print or visual, media influences man a lot. News helps man to shape his views. Coverage of various issues by media includes something more than the straight reporting of events. Analysis, interpretation, comparison, etc. also include in the package of reporting and presenting news developments. But in this process, the policies of media houses and media men are having a decisive role now. The basic lesson of journalism is that media should not be biased. And if it is that necessary to remain biased, the advice is to keep biased towards news. Ideologies, personalities, or such any consideration should not be there while preparing news items. Only the person who knows rule knows well how to break it also. That is what is happening to US media now. Breaking all laws including ethics has become so common in US media. Instead of the guiding society through news developments what media is trying to do is to propagate their own game plans. Masking news which they don’t like, twisting news developments according to the policies of media houses, etc. turned out to be a usual practice. Besides, instead of viewing media as the prime important source of news to the public, large media houses in U.S. which are being managed by management experts, are trying to present newspapers or news portals or even TV shows just as industrial products. Product is a term which is of common use in the field of commerce. Actually the management people who got a slot in media houses are trying to implant business culture into media sector also. That is why the term ‘media industry’ is coined. Once media becomes an industry it is quite sure that business interests also are going to pop up. Recently we can see a drastic change going on in media sector. It is nothing but localization of news. Proximity has become a term of much interest and concern for media men. Media in the U.S. keeps a policy that reader is more interested in news developments which happen close to him. Not the intensity of the news but the proximity decides news value- that is the concept which leads media houses now. For incidents which happen outside U.S. or America itself, no importance is being attached. Print media is having only limited space and visual media is having only limited time. So when constraints of space or time arise, automatically news developments happening far off from a reader or viewer gets no coverage at all. What happens here is nothing but the reader or viewer comes to know nothing on the particular new development which was not served to him by media. When this sort of ‘missing of news’ repeats, the reader turns out to be a totally ignorant man on international developments. To know about all developments around him the only source for an individual is media. If the media is not going to give all the news in detail, the common man will find it difficult to know all the news in all parts of the world. This actually makes the individual ignorant. After the Sept. 11 attack in New York, U.S. citizens were running in search of details regarding Muslims. Actually U.S. people were totally ignorant about the issues which made terrorists attack U.S. Who other than media is to be blamed for this pathetic situation? The U.S. media which went for localization of news didn’t bother to carry news on religions or inter-religions fights. They didn’t carry much detail on the role of U.S. in international politics. They didn’t try to report the relationship between U.S. and other countries. Since the U.S. people is depending these media to know about everything, of course, they became totally ignorant. Good shares of U.S. citizens have no idea regarding the political or social issues in other parts of the world. After discarding international news under the image that people are interested only in news developments that happen so close to them, the next step taken by media was to twist news according to their own requirements. Recently, after getting elected as the President, an interview of Barack Obama appeared in Chicago Tribune. The article quotes Obama saying that through his presidency U.S. is getting an opportunity to develop good relations with Muslims. The article continues that Obama plans to be sworn in like all other presidents, using his full name, Barack Hussein Obama. But it is being pointed out that all presidents didn’t take oath in full name. Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan are examples. Actually here Chicago Tribune was giving readers wrong information, which a medium should never do. When Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was arrested the three major broadcast networks- ABC, NBC and CBS were not happy to reveal that he is a Democrat. They also were very cautious not to reveal the connection between Barack Obama and Rod Blagojevich. A CNN.com article which broke the arrest news of Illinois Governor didn’t mention at all that he belongs to Democratic Party. The examples sited above show the way how media leads U.S. to a nation of ignorant citizens. Impacts also are clear. While talking to New York Times and USA Today, the president’s national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said that Iran was trying to spread Islamic fundamentalism both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But this is factually wrong as Iran is a Shiite Muslim country and keeps strong enmity towards Sunni Muslim Governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Similar was the effect when the president George W. Bush announce ‘crusade’ against terrorism. The Muslims could see it only as a holy war against the whole Muslim community. But what Bush actually meant was the fight against terrorism alone. If these two instances show the impact created in leadership, the way how U.S. men respond to various news developments show the impact created among common man. It is clear from the number of clicks on news Websites that only a very few readers are interested in foreign news. And we can’t be sure that even all of the very few who click on such stories read it completely. Salon Executive Editor Gary Kamiya says: "Until the current crisis, our foreign news stories have generally attracted disappointing numbers of readers". (archive.salon.com/news/feature/2001/09/27/stupidity/index2.html.) References: After Sept. 11, Americans have rushed to educate themselves about Islam, the Middle East and foreign affairs. But how did we get so benighted in the first place? By Laura Miller. archive.salon.com. 06 December 2008. http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2001/09/27/stupidity/index2.html newsbusters.org/node 07 December 2008 http://newsbusters.org/node Read More