Today’s News And Electronic Media – An

Today’s News and Electronic Media – tc "Today’s News and Electronic Media – "
An Evaluationtc "An Evaluation"

My paper highlights the role currently played by the print and electronic media in presenting women as mere show pieces and glamorous dolls.  Sparsely dressed women are used as models to endorse various products.  Right from beauty products to washing machines, costly cars to luxurious Airline travels, women are being exposed to the public glare. The advertisements that are shown on TV are neither screened nor edited by any authorised Body.  Obviously there is no such effective supervising machinery. People are led to believe that they too would become as beautiful and as charming as the models if they use a particular brand of Soap, Toothpaste, Shampoo, Facial Cream etc.  When a person is constantly exposed to such propaganda, he/she naturally tends to be influenced by it.  Particularly teenagers are harmfully affected by unethical Ads.

Of all the senses, man has a highly developed visual sense.  Visual medium is the most powerful one.  We cannot deny the fact that things which are seen for a longer time, specially colour pictures, get permanently etched on their minds.  Hence, the colour pictures splashed in Newspapers and flashed on TV Screen lure the students and the impressionable youth.  The Companies which sponsor such advertisements are encashing on the vulnerabilities of the readers and the viewers.  Especially, this deleterious influence is more on young minds.  They get carried away by these advertisements and their minds get distracted from studies and spoiled.  More and more number of children are becoming delinquents and criminals because of the violence, sex and crime they watch too frequently on TV.  They view all sorts of unwanted things right in their drawing-rooms.

The recent trend is to show even older women on TV advertisements.  Old women dressed up as nannies and grannies appeal to the minds of small children who pester their parents to buy such and such a product in which the elderly lady endorses a certain toothpaste, a herbal cream, a masala powder, a pickle or a pain balm.  Even physicians recommend such products creating a false impression.

Talking about the TV programmes, I feel that again the small children are the worst hit.  They don’t have the discriminating power to distinguish good from bad. Young children learn through imitation.  We heard about the tragic incidents of little children jumping to death from terraces as they tried to imitate the heroic deeds of a popular TV character.  This should be an eye-opener to all the producers of such programmes in order to avoid such accidents in future.  We wonder what the Censor Boards are doing!  Cinema is worse than TV.  The so-called hero defeats a dozen armed men and he performs somersaults to escape their bullets.

Another latest hit formula on the Tube is to portray the ‘Bahu’ as a vamp.  All TV soaps and serials present the daughter-in-law Vs. mother-in-law feud and this debate goes on a never-ending basis.  Such stories are instantly liked by women viewers as they are the target audience to these family dramas.  Episode after episode, these ‘Bahus’ of three to four generations wage a silent war for supremacy in the ‘Khandan’.  Then come the love stories of the boy eloping with his lady love or vice versa.  It seems to the young boys and girls quite thrilling and romantic to watch such programmes and they too would try the same formula, which results in severe complications in real life.

A survey conducted on TV viewing showed astounding results and revealed the harsh reality that a young child by the time he finishes school sees thousands of murders, rapes, robberies, kidnaps and suicides. Some channels which telecast on a basis of 24 x 7 show scantily dressed women parading right in our drawing rooms.  The attraction and pull towards these programmes is growing day by day among the younger generation.  If this trend continues, our youngsters will soon become demoniac and their minds will get rotten.  Hence, there is an urgent need to curb this tendency.  Matinee idols who are hero - worshipped by the youth dress themselves in funny colours and do break dances and the heroines are glued to their bodies. They chase each other on the public roads and in parks.

We hear about the children in the West resorting to dastardly and ruthless acts like shooting and killing their friends and classmates on school campuses because of the influence of the violence they see on TV. There was a case of an eight year old boy in the U.S. shooting down his mother, who refused to put on the channel that he wanted to watch.  If we don’t learn lessons from such incidents which serve as eye-openers, we too should pay a heavy price.  Stories depicting passion, violence, gangsterism, sex and hooliganism should not be screened on the small screen or the big screen.  Effective legislation has to be brought about in this regard resisting the influence of powerful lobbies.

Popular heroines and Beauty Queens are also entering this band being Brand Ambassadors to endorse different products.  Using them as mere glamour queens and showing them in obscene scenes is to be stopped.  Instead, their beauty and brains can be used for a special cause.  ‘Beauty with a Purpose’ should be their motto.  To cite an example, Aishwarya Rai’s Campaign on Eye Donation has evoked tremendous positive response from people all over the country.  Similarly, awareness can be created on problems like dowry deaths, bride burning, sexual harassment etc.  People also can be educated on getting rid of diseases like cancer, polio, AIDS and TB.

There should be a beginning to all good things. Instead of enlightening the children with the noblest human values and ethics, we are injecting poison into their minds.  Let us stop this pollution!

Vulgar and obscene language is usually heard in the films as well as the T.V. Serials.  The dialogues are written in ambiguous language which suggests undesirable meanings.  In earlier days we used to hear decent language because scripts and songs were written by reputed scholars.  Even pronunciation of the artists now-a-days is awful!

There is urgent need to reverse these ugly and harmful trends in the cinema and on the T.V.

Paper presented on 4^th March, 2004 on the occasion of Triveni Platinum Jubilee Celebrations & National Seminar on “The Role of Periodicals on Indian Renaissance and National Integration – Pre and Post Independence Scenario”.