Democracy: Media
Media is the leading power in so called Democracy in my view which I explained in my previous article. In this article I would try to explain this small word “media” which is not small as it is written. I would also highlight on the current situation of Maldives media.
When we look at the definition of media, we would know the size of media. Media are the storage and transmission channels or tools used to store and deliver information or data, so media comes under communication of any data for any purpose. Media is referred synonymous with news media which is a section of mass media. The media which I am referring will be actually news media.
Mass media stands for a section specifically designed to reach a large audience. News media refers to the section of mass media which focuses on current news to the public. News media includes the news papers, magazines, radio station, television station plus huge television networks and the increasingly famous Internet based media which referrers to World Wide Web pages and the weblogs.
After reading all those points about media, we can know that every single action of media connects to the audience or public as I mentioned in previous article. So if there is a revolution happening or we can say anything important which is new to the public is going on, the responsibility of providing the right information about those things will be kept on the shoulders of media. It will depend on the media that if the public for whom these new things or revolutions are made to are totally aware of these or not. So it is very important that the employees who are present in distribution of the news to public are aware. If not, we will be facing problems in creating a good awareness throughout the public.
The way of distributing the news also depends on the awareness of public. The news distributed need to be proper and clear in order to make the situation clear to public. When I said the way of distribution, why would someone distribute news in different ways? It is to bring out a negative meaning from the news favoring some one particular is a clear answer. This is a dangerous habit which is continuously happening throughout the media every day.
When we look at the current situation in Maldives media, especially at a time that we are in the first days of Democracy it is totally in a disappointing position. Maldives also practices about all those news media functions which I mentioned. I will try to highlight on one-by-one function.
When we look at the newspaper and magazine, it is vanishing day by day. Specially nowadays we don’t see much magazines as we saw in previous years. News papers are also vanishing, the complaint of them are that government have stopped subsidizing them. But in my opinion they are lacking the education or ability to stand up on their feet without a help from others. Still there are some ongoing newspapers. In my view newspapers are one of most experienced media in Maldives where we get the true and qualified news at present. Still there are some newspapers that because there owner belongs to one political party, they try to point out the positive things of them and leaving the works done by other parties.
The next are the radio stations. There are many private radio stations at present which is a good sign for us, but only if they distribute news in a good manner. There is a government radio station as well; it is also distributing news quite well but not the best.
At the time been many political leaders and different individuals are using internet media to “share” their views in different situations. It is a very good thing that this will give the public a very good chance of getting the most accurate and right news which belongs to them. But in Maldives very few use this media specially the weblogs where the sharing of news goes on. The leading internet media will be Haveeru which is a newspaper without a doubt.
The next media is the media which is used by more than about 80% of public, the television station. When we give a sight to this media it is at the most disappointing situation in my view. There are 3 news media stations in Maldives. It is good that there are 2 private stations. The next one is called a government or public station which is in a doubt after Parliament introduced a new media co-operation and President Mohamed Nasheed approved that.
I mentioned the most disappointing because of some reasons. The public media is not doing their job well. They distribute the government’s news very well, we can say more than that too. But when it goes to parliament and judiciary I doubt that they are distributing the right and proper news or not. Specially the opposition parties news is given a very little importance. They used to leave many works done by small parties which used to be very important ones. The private stations, specially one station is now been an anti-campaigning station of the current government. According to me this started happening because the public or government media started a campaign for government. The other station is doing quite well, but it also goes against the government too much sometimes.
At last I would like to say that every media need to be INDEPENDENT and need to distribute the right and proper news, not the news of one party but the whole thing need to be distributed whether it belongs to government or an individual too.
24/08/2010