Media, Please Self-Regulate!

“Sach Ka Samna”, speaking the truth in a real life and facing the truth in front of millions on TV is just too much! “The Moment of Truth” – original series of American television asked finer questions than what Rajiv is asking to the contestants in Sach Ka Samna. In one of the episodes, Rajiv asked the contestant nearly all the questions regarding his relation and association between him and his wife. Does the truth of life move around physical relations only? Are those the only truths which are important in life? There are issues which exist in each individual’s life other than sexuality and partnering. From the day one, this show is facing sharp criticism. It also reached the assembly and media was told to self-regulate. Media has consistently failed to self-regulate the material and also the presentation.

According to my opinion, there could have been more interesting though funny questions could be asked. Interaction between two questions regarding the truth revealed could have come with very interesting incidents of one’s life, like Vinod Kambli revealed how he ran a few meters without clothes! People are more candid about their behaviour and actions. There used to illicit relations between male and female in ancient times as well, but there was no media to uncover stories to the outside world.

As there is not much we can do to control such television programmes, all we can do is to self-regulate. It is our choice what to watch and what not. But somehow human senses are curious about the weirdest!

A truth from my side: I too watch this show most of the times!

NUDE CUISINE

Your eyes may remain wide open when you would hear the children secretly, who are as little as 9 or 10. You must have also seen sharply speaking and amazingly loaded little champs on television. All thanks to our ultra metro media and news papers, who help them grow very quickly. The biggest responsibility of the media is to evaluate any kind of material before they present it to the people. They are often the carrier of social issues, trends and accurate news not stories. Let’s blame the media some other day, but have we ever raised our voices against the nudity they serve in your daily news paper? No!

Times of India have been an authentic news group for long and now their supplementary edition Ahmedabad Mirror is at your doorsteps every morning. What you get is more than a few celebrities from Bollywood and Hollywood posing in two pieces. This has become the regular content. Why would you need them at all? Before nearly 5-6 years, even adolescences used to hesitate to touch the Gujarat Samachar’s Friday supplement ‘Chitralok’ contained with full size multi-colored celebrity pictures, in presence of their parents. But at present it is unavoidable as the leading news papers print them openly and every single day. They may argue, it is the news and we want to sell. There could be news about anyone but does it really need an attached nude image only? Accepting globalization, urbanization and being open-minded is good, but does it mean we get over our inherited culture and tradition of feminine respect and ethical preservation. How many of our parents do think seriously that what they want to give their child apart from education (which is also constrained to paying fees and hiring a school van only), food, clothing and other comforts? Most of them want their children to become an engineer, a doctor or a CA – how many of us think to pour in some values, ethics, public behavior and civic responsibilities to their children? Why don’t we protest against the local media for providing such immoral material!? I think we must. We need to open our minds rather than being over-open-minded.

Sneh Bhavsar