Community TV for Youth
By Khazima Munaf and Umema Babar
-James Madison
Journalism reports facts, incidents, events and ideas to inform the society with what can be termed as ‘news.’ This complete process of gathering information and its arrangement is a delicate cycle that requires a lot of efforts and utmost care because, as Edward R. Murrow said, ‘a nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.’ Unfortunately, this is precisely the case.
W. H. Auden fittingly surmised that ‘mass media today offers not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.’ Today technological powers are in the hands of few; people representing the public interest barely have a grasp of the issues. We have lost the ability to set our own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; our critical faculties are in decline; we are unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, and are sliding, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
This dumbing down of society is most obvious in the slow decay of practical content in the enormously powerful and persuasive media. As Carl Sagan noted, ‘the 30 second sound bites, lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, is nothing more than a kind of celebration of ignorance.’
The press called journalism the fourth state but currently it has proven to be in some cases the only state; one that had the power to make an entire country agree to go to war in Iraq after 9/11 on a very loosely held notion that Saddam Hussain had WMD. As much as we would like the media to be objective and one that serves the common people, it simply has failed to since its corporatization.
Understanding and embracing these ground realities of today’s media, Beehive Peoples Media has aimed to overcome this deficiency in dissemination of information and taken initiative in collaboration with Karachi Youth Initiative by inaugurating “Community TV for Youth of Karachi” on the 7th of Dec, 2016. These are a month-long series of workshops for the youth of Karachi in media journalism. Its aim is to set up a parallel media that informs people in an ethical manner; one that empowers them to make informed decisions. The participants of this workshop are over 180 young people selected from all 6 districts of Karachi who belong to all walks of life irrespective of their gender; from being students to working as labor. This idea of embracing the youth of Karachi within the true sphere of journalism is to raise the standard of media by addressing the issues people can relate to and to also to make it easily accessible; after all, when media journalism is being taught in a classroom, it is difficult to claim one a master, every single student present there can provide others a figurative lens of perception to see the world in colors previously unknown. The primary purpose however is to set up a medium that informs people in an ethical manner, again something which is rarely observed in today’s mass media.
Media is much more than just criticism. If black is highlighted, then the white and the grey should be brought out too. Media is not a painting that should necessarily be scenic in its disposition, it should however be honest and should not compromise at promoting and protecting the common people’s right to rule.
Living in Pakistan, a country with a chequered political and judicial history of keeping facts hidden and conning its people into accepting hazardous policies, one cannot help but conclude in affirmation that a nation which is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. Beehive Peoples Media has given a siren call to those who wish to break these barriers of hush-hush created by those in power and change the status quo.