CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF MAINSTREAM MEDIA
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan addressed many press conferences in his lifetime. He also wrote a good deal about the role of media in shaping public opinion. In this article, Maulana enumerates the challenges the media faces. He also provides some guiding principles.
AS part of our mission for constructive work, we seek to communicate our message to every section of the community. Therefore, we thought it would be a good idea that our message gets communicated to our friends of the press as well. For the press is, in our day and age, like the public’s eye with which they see; it is like the public’s mind with which they think.
Although journalism is not very advanced in our country, still—in theory at least—the press is the greatest power in the modern age. In western countries, the press has become an independent force, parallel to governments. If the press in these countries turns against a president or prime minister, then its opposition cannot be ignored. The political eclipse of Richard Nixon in 1973 provides us with an example of the power of the press in western countries.
However, I would like to say that the power of the press has not yet been channeled in the right direction. Man today holds this power in his grasp, but as yet it has not been effectively implemented for the improvement of humankind.
For the media, a piece of good news is no news. A news item has no appeal if it has no sensational value. Modern journalism makes a thing, which in real terms is worthless, appear as if it is of the greatest worth. Steven Pinker is a cognitive scientist and a celebrated author of many best-selling books. Enlightenment Now is perhaps his most famous book. In this book, the author argues on behalf of reason, science, humanism and progress. An adapted article from this book appeared in The Guardian, February 17, 2018.
“News is about things that happen, not things that don’t happen. We never see a journalist saying to the camera, “I’m reporting live from a country where a war has not broken out”— or a city that has not been bombed, or a school that has not been shot up. As long as bad things have not vanished from the face of the earth, there will always be enough incidents to fill the news, especially when billions of smartphones turn most of the world’s population into crime reporters and war correspondents.”
He also writes: “Plane crashes always make the news, but car crashes, which kill far more people, almost never do. Not surprisingly, many people have a fear of flying, but almost no one has a fear of driving. People rank tornadoes (which kill about 50 Americans a year) as a more common cause of death than asthma (which kills more than 4,000 Americans a year), presumably because tornadoes make for better television.”
What we ask of the press is that it should attach importance to real value, not to news value. Attaching importance to real value makes one realistic, and realism is the source of all human virtues. Attaching importance to news value, on the other hand, leads to insincerity, and insincerity is, without doubt, the cause of all human evils.
The press can play an important role in the sincere and constructive society. But at present, it is proceeding in a direction quite contrary to this aim. Islam seeks to train people to attach importance to realities.
Attaching importance to real value makes one realistic, and realism is the source of all human virtues.
While on a foreign trip, I met a gentleman from Canada. He asked me the meaning of Islam. “Islam means realism,” I replied. In fact, Islam is the science of life, and this science is founded on the principle that one should be a realist in this world; in every matter, one should adopt a realistic attitude which is the secret to every success in life, and lack of realism is the prime cause of all failure.
In the present age, there are two departments which are particularly important in fashioning life. These two departments are science and journalism. Science is connected more to the physical world and journalism to the human world. Science studies events in the universe, and journalism deals with the events in the world of man. But the strange thing is that these two departments are at severe odds with one another.
Science is founded fully on realistic principles; it proceeds in compliance with the reality that there is a world outside us that rests solidly on firm laws. Water, for instance, has a law of its own; so does land, and so does the atmosphere. Ships come into being by virtue of conformance with the laws of water; motor cars result from conformance with the laws of the land; airplanes develop from the conformance with laws of atmosphere. This complete conformance with the outside world is what every triumph of science basically is.
But in journalism or the world of man, the very opposite is the case. One chapter of a book I read on journalism showed the principles that a journalist observes when compiling a story. These principles have been illustrated by a special term in journalism: Inverted Pyramid. For instance, a building, 21-storeys in height, is being constructed in town. When a journalist makes a story out of this, his first sentence will be: ‘21-storey building constructed’. Clearly, the 21st storey was the last thing to be built. First, the plan was laid; then the ground was prepared; then the foundations were dug, and construction started from the base until finally the top storey was erected. But, in the news report, it is the 21st storey that comes first.
We must never forget that news items not only shape our opinions, but they also affect our mental health. Sensational or negative news items produce many untoward traits in humans.
One can say that if science attaches importance to real value, then journalism attaches importance to news value. This contradiction in the two major departments of life has caused chaos on earth. The principles which we adopt in science with successful results, we fail to adopt in the rest of our lives; here, we put the contrary principles into practice. The result of this contradiction is that the success which we have obtained in science, we have not been able to obtain in ordinary life. We can, by scientific means, construct a superbly planned town, but in this same town, we cannot live superbly planned lives. Science has enabled us to manufacture machines which work with technical perfection, but we cannot make man fulfil his duty with the same technical perfection.
The thing which is flashed most in the newspapers is that which has the most news value. The most successful press conference is one which is convened on some major public issue. We would like this situation to be changed. We would like to see the same realistic posture that is adopted in the world of physics, adopted in the world of man also. We must never forget that news items not only shape our opinions, but they also affect our mental health. Sensational or negative news items produce many untoward traits in humans.
Steven Pinker enumerates these effects: “Consumers of negative news, not surprisingly, become glum: a recent literature review cited “misperception of risk, anxiety, lower mood levels, learned helplessness, contempt and hostility towards others, desensitization, and in some cases, complete avoidance of the news.”
Islam holds that the Quran is God’s light to man, guiding him on the path to this life of realism. The summary of its teachings is that man should adopt the religion that the whole universe has adopted.