We are finally coming to terms with the fact that our mediais an out of control monster that was originally created for public good. But justlike in the Star Wars, where Anakin Skywalker starts out being a Jedi andprotector of the truth but ends up being Darth Vader, our media is going downthe same path. So now what do we do? Do we build armies and start a galacticbattle against our media?
No, actually we do not have to do anything of that sort.What we have to do to actually take back control of our media or at least makethem fair and honest is to simple ignore them. Yes, it does sound weird buthear me out of this one. Logically the media is not a public enterprise, as init is not a not for profit public good, in fact it is a for profit venture thatmakes money by providing a public good. So the underlying factor for any mediaoutlet is to make money. So the next question is how do they make money? Wellthey make money through advertisers who pay good amounts to have their productsto be placed on the media outlet at prime hours. But advertisers pay way lessmoney to have their products set up during non prime time hours. The differencebeing that during prime time hours, more people tune in to the media outlet, sothe exposure that a product or a service gets is higher. Point of all thisbeing; media outlets make money based on how many people are tuning in. Andthis fact is the proverbial key to controlling our now out of control media.
The power in this relationship lies with the viewer; thechannels do everything they can in their power to attract as many viewers asthey can. Unfortunately the problem lately has been that instead of improvingtheir quality of programming and doing actual journalism, the media outletshave realized that they can attract a lot more viewers by simply putting on ashow which is controversial and pushes all the wrong buttons. This leads topeople talking about it and eventually tuning in to see what the fuss is allabout. In a country where the majority lives by the HOLIER THAN THOU approach, tactlike this plays out well and draws great ratings. Based on ratings theadvertising revenue goes up and well you know the rest.
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| Douchebags like him are what we call RATING WHORES |
So now we know what makes our media outlets act like soullessinhuman animals; the ratings. If we want to make some sense and force our mediato become fair and balanced in the long run then we do not need to writepetitions and throw hissy fits on social media, all we have to do is drop our voyeurismas a nation for a while (I know it cannot be permanent, that is not evenwishful thinking) and hit the media outlets where it hurts the most i.e. theirratings. And we can do this, by simply not watching them. It is not hard, wejust have to not watch their shows or their news or even tune in to them. If wesee them in a public place, we can either shut down the TV or just request the channelto be changed. So when a douchebag like Kamran Shahid on air facilitatingthreats to other people in his show, we can just not watch that. And if enoughpeople not watch him, a douchebag like Kamran Shahid gets fired from his jobbecause EXPRESS or for that matter any other business venture does not like under performers.
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| TRUST INDEX would eventually get rid of things like this |
But this is not all; we have more options that we havepreviously not tried out. The main reason we have not tried them out isactually pretty simple, we are a people who like talking about doing stuff. Wenormally never get to do the actual thing, but we spend enough time talkingabout it to tell ourselves that we have done it.
So in that spirit I am presenting an idea toall of you and specifically to the Citizens for Fair and Responsible Media(CFRM) of which I am a part of as well. My idea is that instead of bashingchannels without getting anywhere with it, what we can do is announce monthlyrankings of the most fair and balanced news channels. CFRM and others like italready have memberships in the thousands, so there is already a sample size ofpeople who themselves are involved in some level of journalism be it formal orcitizen. In addition to that we can run an online survey at the end of everymonth. And based on the results of internal and external voting, we canannounce the rankings and all call them the TRUST INDEX.
So in that spirit I am presenting an idea toall of you and specifically to the Citizens for Fair and Responsible Media(CFRM) of which I am a part of as well. My idea is that instead of bashingchannels without getting anywhere with it, what we can do is announce monthlyrankings of the most fair and balanced news channels. CFRM and others like italready have memberships in the thousands, so there is already a sample size ofpeople who themselves are involved in some level of journalism be it formal orcitizen. In addition to that we can run an online survey at the end of everymonth. And based on the results of internal and external voting, we canannounce the rankings and all call them the TRUST INDEX.
For the first few months, it shall be ignored by the mediahouses. But eventually, our media being absolutely glory hungry would startfollowing it. It is the nature of the beast to seek rewards and approval inorder to make more money. So instead of letting our media whore themselves outfor ratings by some agency which has a shady method to it, why don’t we thepeople start our own rankings. TRUST INDEX can do wonder for Pakistan and itsmedia. I say it’s time we actually did something instead of talking about doingsomething and throwing hissy fits on social media.
Syndicated from: Seedhi Baat
