Communications and Media

With the expansion and broadening of horizons which has taken place in media with the passage of time, responsibility or more precisely social responsibility of media has increased phenomenally. It is always said that with great power, comes great responsibility but in case of media this quotation must be rewritten as with great power, comes greater reasons for accountability. The three basic and fundamental purposes of all media vehicles are to inform, educate and entertain the audience, in addition to this the impact that the subsequent information that is being delivered by media must be in accordance to journalistic values and simultaneously must conform to the fact that whatever is being telecasted must be telecasted with a sense of responsibility and by assessing the consequences that any mishandling of information in such situations can produce (Sally 1999) .

This is primarily significant because of the impact that messages send by media can create in changing opinions, perceptions, beliefs and previously synthesized stereotypes, hence a careful assessment of the type of coverage and the type of information that is being provided by the media is mandatory pre-requisite.  Every media organization has its own agenda and policies through which it functions, its own biases and commercial and sustainable interests. These are certain benchmarks which help the particular organization in determining what is actually news for them and what is not.. Similar is the standard set when it comes to the style of reporting and the amount of coverage that must be provided to any crisis irrespective to whatever category it may belong to. It is an easily comprehended fact that the coverage provided by any media organization manifests its interest and the respective impact that it wants to create on its audience. Moreover there are also other factors that determine such actions and policies formulated by media houses. All these factors will be analyzed periodically with the help of current examples and the behavior that was demonstrated by media in these circumstances. The essay will be dealing with some of these situations which will actually make us realize the true picture of and role played by media. (GIPS 2004)

A very recent event that attracted our attention is the Greek debt crisis. This European indebted of 300 billion was on the brink of national bankruptcy until International Monetary Fund IMF and European Union came into limelight to bailout the country and pull it out from the existing economic depression state. An important piece of information here that the rating companies and their relations with the kingpins of The Wall Street which has recently been exposed apply debt to GDP ratio as the standard method of calculating the debt that the nation has to pay. Now lets consider another important piece of information relating to the sudden emergence and ignition of the debt crisis. If the debt to GDP ratio of countries are analysed it can be easily observed that the position of Greece was much economically stable than other European economies, if 115 of Greek debt to GDP ratio heralds nationally bankrupt then countries like Japan with 190 and Singapore with 120 must have been declared economically insolvent long ago. In addition to this it is worth mentioning that the debt to GDP ratio is not a credible or authentic method of calculating the amount of debt that needs to be paid by the country (Kaufman 2010).

In light of the events that had taken place earlier the role of media and its perfect character as a catalyst cannot be sidelined from the entire menacing situation that was orchestrated for Greece. In case of fanning any financial crisis the most effective and accessible tool used by people and governments to manipulate any crucial situation is the media. Similar was the role played by the media in case of Greek crisis, the coverage provided by media organizations swallowed up the crisis almost neglecting what were the basic facts. A major reason which actually led to the propulsion of this disinformation mania was mainly generated by the sources from which information was gathered were biased. Major information providers included prominent news agencies like Bloomberg and Reuters which apparently are considered very efficient as far as news dissemination is concerned but a concealed fact remains that these agencies long ago became allies of major decision makers and policy deciders that tailor economies according to their own monetary interests. (Kaufman 2010).

A more grave part of the entire scenario is that these agencies are among the top and the most credible agencies in the world and the information provided by these bodies play a pivotal role in influencing investor perspectives. In this context hedge fund managers and economic experts who provide people with their respective opinion may sound to be disinterested apparently but in reality it is largely influenced primarily to remould conditions in the way that proves beneficial to them. Thus the stance of these financially credible media wire services were not based on complete transparency and balance but were rather based on the agenda of extracting personal interests and lack of balance and clarity. Moreover German populism acted as a major antagonist in the entire billion dollar debt crisis as being a major exporter to Greece the bailout package which Germany is willing to provide Greece will not cost a single penny to the German tax payer. But the most unfortunate conclusion that one can derive out of the entire episode is that German leaders and media as well as international media did not possess the courage to disclose these facts to their public, on the contrary their part in deteriorating and over sensationalizing the entire issue was much more evident. (Kaufman 2010).

Next issue which comes in line after this is the recent earthquake that completely obliterated the island of Haiti. The response shown by U.S media to this environmental catastrophe that swallowed millions of people and left numerous others homeless was undoubtedly very complacent, consoling, cognizant and sympathetic to the disaster. Various campaigns were launched by various prominent civil society and non-governmental organizations all over the country to collect aid for the country. Television stars, singers and public figures all joined hands and stood shoulder to shoulder in this painful moment of the Haitians. Even after many days of disaster occurrence prominent media channels like CNN and Fox News periodically provided their viewers with the coverage of the relief activities that were being conducted in the country. One major reason for this excessive coverage of external issue by U.S media can be attributed to the presence of the proximity factor or more precisely the component of geographical proximity. The geographical closeness of the two countries played a vital role in inducing an alteration of media approach of handling the large scale environmental crisis that sparked in Haiti. Moreover the role of U.S media by their distinguished style of reporting helped in unearthing the actual turmoil that had taken place in the country and the level to which natural calamity had outstretched its massive tentacles. This is many ways helped the social mobilization of human welfare groups who gathered to donate money for the victims of the capricious disaster. Despite of the fact that there were also conspiracy theories by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez making rounds that the earthquake that destroyed was actually due to the testing of U.S Techtronic device, but such theories could not prevent U.S media or their civil society to gather support for Haiti quake victims. (Neil 2010)

However the misuse of being personnel from a media baron organization or a reporter from a prominent and reputed newspaper was demonstrated primarily by British media and journalists. According to some senior media experts British journalists that landed in Haiti were not there to report their public about the relief operations that were being conducted in the place but to gaze at corpses of children, women and men who were lying of top of one another in a pathetic state. Prominent and prestigious newspapers such as the Guardian and the Independent published headlines that were intended to titillate the reader rather than enlightening the reader or making him or her sympathetic about the disaster that took place(Rupp,1974).

Main lead of the Guardian stated  Dirty white sheets cover some of the dead, others lie out in the open, some, their limbs entwined with anothers whereas on the Independent the main headline of that day went by, Three cockerels scratched among a pile of six now-bloated corpses, and pecked at the entrails of one of the deceased, a middle-aged man, more humiliating than this was the headline under which the news was written which went by Dignity the scarcest commodity in Haiti. an obvious deduction that one can make out of all this is that if the dignity of Haiti civilians are published in the form of nude children photographs, broken fore and hind limbs of men and naked porn then the commodity of dignity is not only a dearth but has been very flawlessly been substituted by sheer pornography with a whole of gratitude to prominent media baron organizations governing the code of conduct of British communications. It was not only the print media that were indulged in this type of media negligence but it was observed that the behavior of electronic media that was following almost the same track. (The Guardian)

Reporters from prominent news channels like Channel 4 and Sky News who was reporting directly from the rubble of Haiti sidelined all principles of reporting and journalism and ruthlessly replaced it with an overwhelming element of fascination by the injuries of people. The writing style of reporters in their respective newspapers was mainly viewed by experts as more supernatural and cathartic rather on the basic function of informing people with the facts and the condition prevalent in the country. They were written in a way so as to provide an impression to the reader as if London or United Kingdom has been rattled by a natural calamity. In this context the social responsibility agenda that the media of every country must play was not executed or exercised by UK media (Boween 1993)

As if all this was not enough there were blunders committed in the name of providing information to people when The People published the photograph of a man heaving a six-year old child on his back , trying to make his way by going through a pile of corpses lying beneath him. The headline which read this was even much more shocking as it read You will want to look away. You will be sickened, shocked and outraged. The biggest problem that arises from this unnecessary sensationalism is that all these media anomalies and blunders could not provide people with the appropriate information that was required to make people acquainted about the condition of the place after earthquake. People were more interested in knowing whether the aid being provided to Haiti is being properly channelized, whether the refugee camps have been set up and to what steps are being taken to curb the looting and plunder that took place in the aftermath of the calamity. (Katz 2010)

All in a nutshell, media has undoubtedly played a phenomenal role in providing people first hand information about any incident that occurred any where over the planet, not only this but it also provides its viewers with latest updates from the new site but simultaneously one has to acknowledge that the fundamentals of modern journalism are being tampered at a rampant pace and a more harmful repercussion of such ruthless media reporting and journalism is commonly taken as an inspiration by those countries where media liberty and freedom is still in its embryonic stages. When the code of conduct and code of ethics that is designed in these countries for the media it does accommodate such unethical practices which are a mere violation and against the general rules and regulations associated with journalism and reporting merely because all these countries in one way or the other idealize the doctrines and salient features through which media operates and functions in these countries. No matter whatever may be the case the fact that remains dominant is that in this the component of social responsibility felt completely marginalized and in such situations facts and disinterests get substituted by personal biases and lack of appropriate facts. (Palmer 2004)