The role of media in society [Archives:2006/954/Reportage]
Ismail Al-Ghabri
Press history shows that it was born to educate people about happenings that affect or were likely to affect them, as well as agitate on their behalf to resolve their grievances and protect their interests.
The press also assumed a certain code of private and public conduct which those in authority were expected to follow. Any deviation from assumed norms came in for a severe rebuke from the press. This not only helped keep those in power in check and on the right path, but it did something more.
By discussing the standards of private and public morals, it also held before the public at large a set of ethical guidelines and indirectly influenced their pattern of private and public behavior. The press became society's mirror for all purposes, focusing on news making individuals and events.
The press can inform all those concerned about achievements in agriculture, industry, education, health, medicine and science and technology, carrying into every home the fruits of research in these and other fields in as simple and plain a language as possible and help individuals in self-advancement. The press also can bring to public attention the achievements of individuals and organizations, including non-governmental organizations, in various fields.
As a mass communicator, print media can achieve what a nation-builder can by educating, motivating, exhorting and rewarding individuals. Media can foster and promote the good and expose and condemn evil. Media can hold before the public an ideal and castigate the deviant. It can promote tolerance, brotherhood and unity and root out intolerance, divisiveness, enmity and hatred. It can prevent conflicts and violence and build up peaceful relations and respect for rule of law. Media can curb confrontation and help solve problems amicably.
The press also can move a nation to progress, ushering in prosperity and happiness for all. To this end, it can focus attention of the public and the powers that be on areas and individuals needing development and betterment, discuss and suggest necessary measures, as well as the best ways and means of implementing them. It can highlight measures, schemes and projects planned by authorities at various levels, depicting their gains and failures, pointing out their non-implementation, as well as delays, waste and malpractices in their operations.
The press also can invite policy-makers' attention to the need for social welfare schemes for weaker and vulnerable sections of society. The need to democratize the press by inducting in it representatives of the have-nots and making it a voice for their grievances and aspirations can't be overemphasized.
To qualify as society's watchdog, the press must represent society as a whole and monitor the interests of all sections. The press's social audit can't ignore this vital aspect of its structure and functioning. Communication no longer remains an incidental service; rather, it has become a primary service and as such, an essential institution of modern society.
In a truly democratic society, communication constitutes its foundation; therefore, mass media rightly have come to be regarded as the state's fourth organ. As a unique means of written mass communication, the press was the fourth organ's sole constituent until the advent of radio and television.
Though electronic media now holds sway, the press has not lost its hold on the public, continuing to play its powerful role as informer and educator and the purveyor of news and modern views.
Today, the press has become a more powerful institution than the state's other three organs, as it can comment on and criticize functioning of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. It can make and mar individuals and institutions, as well as mobilize public opinion and overthrow governments.
Vast sections of the public, both as individuals and members of certain groups, are victims of exploitation, discrimination and of unjust and inequitable social and economic order. They have unarticulated grievances that go unheeded even if articulated, so they urgently need relief.
Can't the press act as a tribune – a kind of day-to-day Parliament of the people – presenting their grievances to authorities and pursuing them until they are redressed? Not that the grievances of those who can articulate aren't published, but even those aren't picked up as a cause to be pursued.
Corruption, nepotism and many other malpractices in the functioning of those vested with public power, as well as non-implementation and faulty implementation of various schemes and projects, can be exposed legitimately via press columns.
Investigative journalism must not be only an occasional phenomenon, nor must it concentrate only on major scams and scandals, nor is it is undertaken by large newspapers alone. Even small newspapers must act as society's watchdog. Large newspapers can and should assist small ones on this behalf and secure their services for this purpose. Large newspapers also can extend their protective umbrella to small ones by ensuring security for them on such occasions by highlighting their precarious condition and pressures exerted upon them.
As a catalyst for change, the press has a considerable role to play because it's an input into development itself and into social change, which, when occurring, is accelerated by the development process. Society is in the process of modernization – of transitioning from traditional to modern – and this produces tremendous pressures and a great deal of strain on the public, which we are witnessing today.
One of the problems with reporting on development and change is that it's not an event but a process. Therefore, it's something that doesn't necessarily catch the eye, so it's relegated due to not being an event. It's not time-bound therefore, it can be done tomorrow, which becomes the day after and so it continues.
Many events later occur due to unnoticed and unanticipated social change because things come to a boil, then there's an explosion and the event makes news. However, the preceding chain of events that built up that pressure went unnoticed, which is something newspapers must look at more carefully.
Editors and journalists must make development news and news about social change newsworthy and such stories must compete with sports, political news, scams, sensations, high society news or whatever else. They should relate development to the public's mind to see how such change and development processes impact their lives, if such happens. When it does happen, the whole web opens, but it's equally important if it doesn't happen. Very often, there's a big story in relating what happens as opposed to something that doesn't happen.
As the fourth estate, the press is accountable to the people as a wielder of power over them, as an exerciser of freedom of expression for and on behalf of society and as a recipient of the people's patronage. Practices of misinformation, disinformation and suppressing news and views can continue unchecked on a very large scale because most individuals don't exercise their fundamental right to obtain or receive correct information from the press.
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