Media 2 : A Rebuild

In the previous article Media 1: Market value of Ignorance (http://thusharaav.blogspot.in/2016/03/media-1-market-value-of-ignorance.html) we saw what a media target in the readers (as a marketing tool) and how do they choose news that please them and thus increase the circulation.

What is the real purpose of media? Media is defined to be ‘a means of mass communication’. When we say communication, it is exchange of information (is collection of facts). It could be unidirectional or bi-directional. Bi-directional is two way communication.

When the British ruled us (or king ruled us), Media did a remarkable job, they informed us –the natives- the unfriendly terrific laws that the British (or the king's) govt. owned, they provoked us not to trust their policies and we should fight against them, they made us think (or feel) that the govt. is good for no one, we do not need a foreign govt. and we need a radical change, they indirectly encouraged us to disobey the govt. and to move against them reminding it is not our law, it is never going to stand with us; projecting the distress of oppressed natives.

Many journalists were punished, some news papers were banned. Say, Kesari, Swadeshabhimaani in Travancore.

It was incredible, the courage and the will power of journalists to act taking risk, against the authority.

Let us review media at present.

They inform us how selfish and corrupt govt. we have, they provoke us not to trust any of their policies, they make us think (or feel) that the govt. is good for no one and we don’t want such a govt., they indirectly encourage us to disobey the govt. and to move against them reminding it is never going to stand with us; projecting the dysfunction of our system.

But, we are the govt... Each and every individual in the authority is one among us; let it be minister or a govt. employee.

In case of news papers, as a media I'd like to think of it as communication between authority and the citizen.

In the British India, the govt. never were concerned about the well being of the citizen as a result they weren't interested in the opinion or criticism from the citizen. Moreover our aim was to shatter the unfriendly govt. For that we have to inform the govt. nothing from our side. But In the present India there are a collection of rules and regulation by which a citizen is expected to live in and a govt. is expected to act. So, in principle both parties have to be aware of what is happening in both side and hence to regulate each other to act as the law insist. But when we analyse newspapers they inform us nothing related to regulation but dysfunctions. Along with the dysfunction we need to know solutions too, to fix them. I suppose news papers should inform us how the dysfunctions violate the laws or regulations such a way that it will encourage us to speak up against it. Taking pygmalion effect(it says higher expectations lead to an efficient, better performance; so does the negation.[1] [2]) into account, whenever we get a feedback as nothing is going to work we are going to believe them stronger. Here I recall Goebbelisian propaganda that 'repeat a lie thousand times and it becomes the truth'...

I was thinking about rebuilding the news papers merely as a means of communication between the authority/govt. and the citizen. Where both parties can express their criticism and appreciation on certain deeds. At present I find a wide communication gap between govt. and citizen. If we could establish a govt. press in which members will be representatives from the side of ruling party, opposition party and citizen and the news paper act as a medium between the govt and citizen. It'd increase the efficiency and reduce the dysfunctions to an extend I suppose.

No one can expect a govt to rule perfectly, they need to be regulated and supervised to make less mistakes... (A corrupt govt is an implication of corrupt citizens, who fails to follow fundamental responsibilities and to fight for their rights)

It may seem an Utopian dream but still I dream...


Ref:
1 http://www.intropsych.com/ch15_social/expectancy.html
2 https://sites.google.com/site/7arosenthal/

Media 1: Market Value of Ignorance

What if I say, you can infer the standard of life of a certain locality merely by analyzing a popular newspaper in that locality?

Before going into the topic let me tell you story of 'Mc paper'.

It's a story about USA today, the largest-selling newspaper in America. It was a time all the newspapers faced a crisis; steep decline in number of readers (late 80's and early 90's)... The time when television was popular and commonly available. Television provide us fresh and lively broadcasting news, colorful motion pictures which appeal our eyes than any black and white and long reading materials like news papers. The news papers at that time had numerous killing and crime news, long stories, black and white photographs, less graphics, and not much updated news on events like sports whereas in a television we can watch the whole event lively!

So it is not surprising that there was a decline in the number of readers. But not for all news papers! USA today thrived the crisis. It had no long stories anymore, all of them were short stories! It included more colorful photos, charts and graphics. It gave more importance to entertaining, sports news than international, informative news...like fast food; attractive, though good for nothing. Or the paper looks good but the news were not worthy to be read. As a result people called it 'Mc paper' - recalling Mc Donald's fast food!-. But the observation was quite interesting, the circulation grew... within a year of staring the newspaper, it had got more than one million readers per day! It targeted the interest of majority of the population; youth, who were raised up watching television and we have already seen how do television appeal our 'mind'.

As the circulation of USA today grew, other papers began to imitate them. Still USA today was on top of them... How did it happen? In brief one could say, it kept tracking the interests of the majority and tried to appeal them.

The society changed as time elapsed... so does USA today!

It began to add international news, long stories like the traditional news papers, keeping it's colorful appearance. Because, it wanted to appeal the majority; and the majority were educated, who wanted to know international news, and information in detail...

So that's the story of the Mc paper!

Here in India or reducing the sampling space merely to the state Kerala, we witness the effort that news papers take to cope with other visual and social media. I'd rather call it as gossiper than news paper! Most of the 'information' that the news papers say are not of much importance or possess not much validity. They just creates sensational news; precisely gossip with sensational words like corruption, rape, murder, and arrest etc. They publish news about minister helps a poor, homeless individual to get into a hospital and insist the hospital authority to take care for himer. How the 'neutrino radiation going to kill us'  (oh, dear...) from the upcoming neutrino observatory. They publish her news about abandoning marriage since his family urges for dowry (more than that fixed earlier!!!) and next to it they add advertisement of jewelry -to buy gold cost effectively - for her marriage, and nowadays numerous religious issues too!

Why do we lack 'detailed' news on UN's global peace movements, news on DIY underground water refill methods for each season, updates from MOM, or why the stock market fall on a certain day how it is going to affect the currency value and hence our daily life etc.

May be haven't reached there yet... to a point when such news are of first priority than the news of human who strive to get their fundamental rights done. Because we are also in the same state striving to live in, and we want to know how people cope with it, survive it, and to find solace in it... and in midst of the struggle we don't care about the validity or the relevance of a piece of information instead we take them for granted and we deceive ourselves making us believe 'this is the world'. Market knows it and they make use of the ignorance very well...

Which I believe can be efficiently extrapolated to popular magazines, content and emotional/ideological biasing of popular movies and tv shows/series etc...

Let us decide if we want to tease them for their pathetically cooked news (stories and screenplays in case of visual media) or pity ourselves for letting the society to be ignorant or to stand away from all of them since it doesn't affect me or make them a study material and find ways to get out of the situation and to succeed.