Need of the hour -24
Tweak the news columns…
-J.P.Bharathi
Its time, News columns should be divided into healthy news, constructive news, encouraging news ideas on one side of the news paper and unhealthy news, discouraging facts, antisocial news on the other side. If need be, they should be even differentiated with positive and negative colour markings or highlighters. We should also remember that in every happening there is a victim and a culprit. The focus and attention for help should be moved towards the victims and the culprits should be projected with a clear thorny crown. Also news items which need sympathy, justice and public attention should be projected in a way where the focus should be in rectifying the situation. Such news items should be spaced for certain duration or till the justice or help is reached.
In the sense, the news should be on the front lines, till justice is achieved. Also, if certain news items are taking more time to get resolved, they can be lined up in different space in the news paper. This way of featuring news will ensure justice for various things in the society. If not, certain very important areas in the news are lost over a period of time. Its obvious justice delayed is justice denied. Journalists will focus on the further developments, and news readers will go to the same columns to check the latest updates on the news item. More importantly, people who are wrong doers should be columned separately from the people who need justice and public empathy. The criminals and law breakers should never be allowed to cover their faces with masks. They should not be occupying the first and front columns of the news papers. This will defeat the purpose of the news item.
Positive news can be highlighted with Indian flag colours and the negative news should be patched with red. As we already see that there are sports news, music, arts, dance, literary and so on, we should also have separate space and columns created for various types of news. When there are demarcations in the news columns, without much effort, news readers will be able to assess the value of the news item. If not the news which occupies the headlines and front pages of the news papers misguides people and projects a wrong man or a wrong doing as the important news item. We have seen many times, unethical public figures waving to the innocent public and creating a positive image to themselves. This is because, many news items and crime is very rarely understood by an average and a mediocre person in the society.
If this kind of segregation of news columns is done, people reading the news paper can choose to read good, healthy, constructive and encouraging columns and then go to read the discouraging facts, unhealthy news, unsocial news and become more vigilant.
By and large the news papers are always filled up with discouraging news items covering atrocities, mishappenings, frauds, violence, rapes, scams to name a few. The healthy news reading habit in the schools and educational institutions is not providing any kind of good information to the future citizens of our country. More so, students tend to pick up headlines from the news papers. Generally these happen to be negative or bad news which is occupying the front pages of the news papers. The news paper reading in school, class and assembly activities is not giving positive strokes to the students. Instead it is bringing regional, communal differences and also highlighting the unhealthy behaviour in the school children. When the wrong news occupies a large portion of our news paper, news papers are failing in their duty to give proper guidance and directions to our younger generation.
Media channels also cater more time towards violence and atrocities. Showing the same clippings number of times has a multiplying effect on the viewers. In other words, children who are not clear about morals and values, feel this kind of things are normal and start following the same.
There are so many NGOs, social welfare organisations, self help groups, patriots, Samaritans doing great welfare activities in the society. They are hardly featured and rarely occupy a very significant corner of our news papers. It is very important for the news agencies to put their efforts for good news and ensure to see that positive news gets the main focus. If this becomes the criteria, journalists will be putting more focus on the positive aspects while collecting the news from the neighbourhood. This way, we will be able to construct a healthy society giving positive directions to the people who read news paper as a habit. While good is highlighted, there is also a chance to educate the youth towards healthy habits. Let us always remember, there is certain section of every society, which would like to follow the role models and ideal leaders. We all know an idle mind is devils workshop. We have to now make a shift in the thinking process of every individual. News papers can magically transform individuals by creating ideal minds. Now can we also change the old proverb, and say “An ideal mind is God’s workshop”!!
If the focus is not shifted from bad to good, healthy news reading habit will slowly fade away in the society.
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