ہاں! میں باغی ہوں

There has always been a trend in Pakistan and people of Pakistan, when a person do something new, whole nation starts doing this, whether this is clothes, designs or anything else. Everyone thinks that this thing is in demand and then others follow this blindly to earn profits without thinking that that monotonous following of a pattern may lead to absurdities.

This same trend was followed by todays so called media, mainly telecommunication media. But let me go in a little detail before coming to the main point.

During the reign of Gen. Musharraf, he devised complete freedom to media, so that it can become the voice of country and we can compete the Indian and western cultures. This brought in some of today’s very popular news channels, like Geo, Express news, and some others.

But today musharraf is gone, and what he left us behind, is an endless war of media to win over one another. Today this has become a hell of mess, once you hold the remote of your TV and start tuning the channels, after ever 1-2 channels there jumps in a news channel. There is a list of so many channels opening everyday as illegal kids are born out of womb in red light areas, and this race has not ended yet. There is no individuality in these channels, all portraying the same picture in the same style. Suppose the president announced something stupid, every channel is running in a race to win over the other, all making it thrilling, stunning and suspenseful news. All channels will run in this race, all of them will start showing this news, at the same time, in the same way.

But did these media channel owner’s have ever gone in depth and thought for a while, for a very careful and precise analysis of people and their view about this whole crap.

Today 90% of middle aged people prefer “GEO” without any reason, they prefer it, and they are not willing to see any other channel at all, whether the Geo is showing something good or not, they are watching Geo. Then comes the younger generation, today majority of them also prefer Geo but some whole don’t like the biased and prejudiced policies of Geo, like me, they see Express News and finds it quite good to see at. But here we see, there is a huge list of channels doing same thing, Hum, Aaj, Apna, TV one, ARY, Indus, Dawn, Royal, city42, and recently I came across a new channel, Metro News.

If something happens in any city of Pakistan, suppose some bomb explosion or some suicide attack, people 1st try to switch to Geo and then to Express. But no one sees this list of channels but still they are running this blind race. Did anyone ever ask them WHY?

I want to quote Mubashar Luqman’s wordings; today we have around 50 channels among of which 40 are news channels. Don’t you think this is a big question mark for all of us, do we need this much news channel at all?

Today when you have so many other problems, electricity, sugar, gas, employment, budgeting, and so much more, media must play a role of giving entertainment to people but no! Media is giving tension and depression and nothing else. Today among all other problems of Pakistan, problem of this much independence to media given by former president, seems to be a big mistake.

If we go a little bit deep in these media talks, apart from these news that they telecast, they try to make this whole situation more stunning by hiring some enthusiastic and zealous person from people and asking him to debate on Pakistan problems in a hot and attractive way to gain attention of people to see their channels. This is another race, among media channels. Hiring the most thrilling and clear talking anchor to give people what they want to see.

Now I think I have come to my main point, media is doing, the exact same thing, what people want to see, they show us what we want to be shown, therefore a question arises from inside us, shall we not demand a change for our system, shall we not bring a revolutionary change in our system. We need to think of our inside 1st and think what problems we have that we are being used in this way by other factors. Only then we can bring about a change.

Today hypertension has become a very common disease, diabetes has become common. Did anyone ever try to think why today there are so many patients of hypertension, why every 2nd person is victim of this? This is because of depression given by various factors, and media is one very important part of it.