OPINION/ Sreekumar Bhattathiri
Some 25 years back, a recurring topic for essay-writing in schools and colleges was: “A day without newspapers’’. In those days one couldn’t imagine a day without having the pleasure of going through one’s daily newspapers. It was then. What about now?
Haven’t you noticed nowadays that a day without newspapers is far better, qualitatively, than other days in which we willy-nilly, egged on by the force of habit, read the papers?
Why this difference? Have today’s news items become so cheap and mean? Has news presentation become so insipid? Or, is it that today’s life has become so uninteresting and abominable for men who think, and those who value morals and nobility?
It is the cumulative effect of all these factors that makes our present-day newspapers so dull and negative. Father raping his own daughter, competition in liquor gulping, hurling of explosive expletives between political parties, or different factions of the same party, antisocial activities in different garbs — these fill the lion’s share of newspapers’ space.
Nobody is giving any convincing answer to any of these questions: How does the quarrel between Achuthanandan and Pinarayi factions affect the common man? Who is bothered about which town takes the cake for drinking the maximum liquor, Karunagappally, or Chalakkudy? A father who has raped one daughter won’t be having any qualms in raping his second daughter. So will it make any news?
News and newspapers should be edifying, ennobling, strengthening, purifying. They have a great social responsibility. Playing to the gallery or playing up stories for sensationalism should not be their aim. If this negative trend goes on, the subscribers have only one option: stop subscribing to such newspapers.
Due to force of habit, this is no easy thing. But, through constant trials, this is possible. Now that we have mobile phones and Internet, knowing what is happening around us is no problem. Do it and dispense with newspapers. Newspapers and news establishments may not improve with your boycotting them. But you will. Definitely.
Think.
(The writer is a senior journalist based in Kerala)
Further Reading- Maha raises drinking age to 25 yrs – Times of India
- Maha raises drinking age to 25 yrs – Times of India
- Maha raises drinking age to 25 yrs – Times of India
- Maha raises drinking age to 25 yrs – Times of India
- Maha raises drinking age to 25 yrs – Times of India
- Maha raises drinking age to 25 yrs – Times of India
- Maha raises drinking age to 25 yrs – Times of India
- PRESS DIGEST-New Zealand newspapers – Feb 28 – Reuters
- HC upholds death for man who killed sr citizen, raped woman – Times of India
- Heat say they’re looking _ only _ at Game 5 – USA Today
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