Modern-day electronic media, on the other hand, has employed advanced technology to wage a bloodless war in the form of investigative reporting and live debates.
The combined usage of auditory and visual sensory perceptions by the electronic media can succeed in stimulating deep emotions and sensations.
Televised news is the most powerful medium today, especially in Pakistan where the literacy rate is extremely low. Due to impact of TV channels, the people are more informed. The electronic media, along with the print media, often criticize the government for going against the spirit of the constitution, violating democratic traditions and being unaccountable to the public at large for inflation, unemployment, poverty, deterioration of the law and order situation and highhandedness against opposition.
It can be used as a motivational force to bring consensus on vital issues like education and health. The truth is that the significance of the media as a medium of interconnectedness of human affairs cannot be undermined in an age of rapid globalization.
It seems to have overtaken the press in forms of impact on the target population in as much as it reproduces events and characters on the screen directly and promptly. The advent of independent TV channels in the country substantially transformed our culture and political discourse. Television is far more effective pervasive, intensive and graphic than print media. Its impact on the public mind is substantially higher than that of the print media. Live coverage on television not only provides us with the most up-to-date information about events but also engages the viewer in a way that print media cannot do the in the same way.
It is usually claimed that the job of the media is the dispassionate presentation of facts. The fact is that the job of the media person is not to serve as a post office but more importantly to educate the public through informed reporting so as to facilitate as objective an opinion formation as possible. A free media that works conscientiously can serve as the collective conscience at the national and international level. This, however, is often easier said than done.
The reporter or journalist is after all human and endowed with biases and in some cases prejudices and as with all power bases the media too is vulnerable to the corruption of the absolute power. There will always be those in their ranks who can be bought with cash or perks or promises of paradise. But then there will always be those who are not purchasable because they know that their reporting can make or break individuals, communities and nations -- a heavy burden indeed.
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