KeduovilieLinyü
Today, we find newspapers with their pages filled with reports of murders, brutality,accidents and crime and know that there is something very wrong with society and such development-oriented communication constitute a negligible percentage of the total column space available in it at the state and national level. Those who have been manning these channels particularly, the print medium are also found to be urban-bred with little contact with the rural areas and the masses.
Most of the editors and managers of the print medium provide only a negligible percentage of the total column space available for development communication in the daily newspapers. Most of them have very little time left for attending to the vital aspects of filing development stories, much of their time as the situation now obtains is taken by publicizing government programmes and attending to public relations work connected with VIPs and others who are constantly on tours in the districts.
What is development? The removal of poverty, the lessening of disparity between regions and classes, the building up of the technological infrastructure, modernization of society through shedding feudalism , tribalism and superstition, the gradual achievements of economic self- reliance. As such development reporting has to be built around persons. Development reporting must concern itself with the people. It must show them how to improve their bargaining power with society. The objective of mass media in development is conveying information on various aspects of development programme and feedback and providing content, direction, speed and motivation for planed change. Its role is perceived as creating a purposive wave-length between the development planners, policy-makers and administration on the one hand and the people on the other.
The reporter’s role is to take the people to where things are happening. In effect the reporter says to the reader: “see it now” and “hear it now” as Edward R. Murrow, the famous American reporter, put it. So if the fall of a house is news, its building is also news. News is the report not only of an event, but of a process. Jawaharlal Nehru used to describe the new projects as the “Temples of new age” He was keen that the workers must be aware of the implications of their work. News like corruption, accidents, death, violence,dacoity are old and no longer news, reporters should try and setright this situation. They should be able to locate and report items of development news, study and evaluate the efforts of development agencies and translate development information correctly in simple vital and lively language,so that people can easily understand. The press lives by disclosure, whatever passes into its keeping becomes a part of the knowledge and history of our time, public opinion-anticipation, if possible, the march of events- standing upon the breach between the present and the future, and extending its survey to the horizon of the world.
We are aware of the fact that most of the dailies contain only negligible developmental news and politics, strikes, personal news about ministers, quasi political organization, crime and thrill news find more space and attention. We notice now and then in small articles and smaller news items, subjects like education, family planning, rural economic and agriculture getting a hearing in the newspapers. The media also are urban-based and elite –oriented. In fact, a politician’s speech should be reported only if it is like a newspaper, informative, educative or entertaining. If only the newsmen understand the hopes and needs of the people : if they change its politics oriented outlook and concentrated on people instead, the press will be more in tune with the current mood of the people and would also gain credibility. Since journalists are mainly responsible for making development and change, the most exciting aspects of modern life dull and boring, it is up to them to reverse the trend
