The Lack of Social Responsibility by the Media and How It Impacts Our Society

The ideal role of media or any media house is to offer real time, comprehensive and unbiased and honest reporting. It is by far one of the biggest social causes that one can indulge in. That is to bring out the real picture of the entire societal ecosystem to all its stakeholders. However, the media’s role ought to be without any kind of bias or with over-sensationalizing news.

The basic design of media or media houses across the globe is so much at fault that to expect anything unbiased and honest is a far cry. It is not hidden from anybody that media, across the world is cartelized, either by few private entities or by the government itself. In either of the case, invariably, the quest for survival is to build upon societal perceptions. If it is government owned or government censored - their sole objective is to use the medium of media in their own propaganda. There are countless examples across the world, where in the media is just reduced to a government mouthpiece, with no care towards burning societal issues. On the other hand, private media houses are either giants in themselves or have cartelized in a manner that they can corner the maximum pie of advertisement revenues - which, in most cases is the lifeline of media houses. In either case, it is observed that they are more concerned to take care of their advertisers’ interest through their medium, with bare minimum concern towards responsible reporting.

It is needless to state, that media exercises an unchallenging grip in shaping the mindset of generations. Over time, they have been instrumental in subtly engineering opinions and convictions within people. People grow up reading their favourite newspaper/magazines/editorials or even watching their favourite televised channel. It is this constant hammering, over time, that shapes the mindsets towards everything, be it politics, businesses, environment et al, which only gains rigid permanence over time and impacting the behavioural patterns of societies.

Had media played its role responsibly, it would have been evident by the civilization shaping up accordingly. The populaces are probably becoming, far worse in every society and human parameters, with the passing of the days! And amongst many other things, media and media houses are one of the reasons for this perpetual degeneration. The silver lining, however, is the rise of social media in terms of disseminating information in constant conflict with the biased media reports. The social media are particularly effective in the dictatorial regimes and autocratic governments, where the role of free media is minimal. The population in such states had been habituated recipients of biased reporting by the state controlled media. The social media, such as Facebook and Twitter constantly conflicts with the conditioning of the audience in relation to the feeding of the information carried out by the state machinery.