CHENNAI : Today if we take any morning news-paper and have a look at its columns, we would see that most of the news covered are about events of perverse human dealings, bride burning, oppression of lower caste, railway accidents, floods and fires, scandals, political defections, dacoity ies, hostility between religious communities and warfare between countries. As result of this, when there is no news of a big scandal, a horrible murder, a terrific railway accident or a major racket or a calamity in a paper, readers say, “There is no news today; today’s paper is tasteless.’ This usual trend has come to stay so much so that, in the field of journalism, it has become a common saying that bad news is good news.
It is declared with great pride that the press is ‘the watch-dog of democracy’. Thus, strict and fearless criticism is considered to be one of the main duties of the press. The idea behind it is that the public may be awake to the misdeeds of the leaders and that anyone who is planning to indulge in crime or in disruptive activities, should bear in mind that he will be exposed and will be hauled up because of his illegal acts. But what is the net visible result of such exposures?
We all must first realise that the root cause of all kinds of misery and crime lies mainly in unethical thoughts, words and acts of man. Incidents like these spring from what may well be called ‘impurity of thought’ or, in other words, from violence, hate, greed, etc. in the minds of men. These evils can be reduced or, by tackling the root-cause itself, viz., pollution of thought, or by inculcating in people what goes today by the name of moral values, humanism or purity in the mind of man. Every media person should realise that if a world full of peace and happiness is to arrive, then it would not be possible without a constructive role of media.