Media plays an important role in human civilization. In today’s world, media has become as essential as our daily needs. It helps people to remain informed and updated about various issues including new occurrences, events, social activities, lifestyle, entertainment, and advertisements.
Media of today apart from informing and entertaining the society, it plays crucial role in shaping up publics’ opinion, and further strengthening the social fabric of the society creating socially cohesive community.
Media, therefore, can bring about both positive and negative impacts on the lives and the minds of the people. In this regard, among the many undesirable outcomes came to happen due to unethical usage of media, the Rwandan genocide is the one. This deliberate killing was aroused by a single irresponsible radio station.
According to Debebe Eshetu, a pioneer artist, media has a role to play in sustaining peace, creating awareness among the people as its scope is wide.
Creating awareness to the society is not a onetime activity as a campaign. Rather, it requires a continuous action, to him.
“For instance, in most cases, our media tries to create awareness towards various issues, such as HIV and AIDS. But, they have not been able to achieve the desired goals because the effort needs continuous activities.”
So, the media should work persistently to inform, educate and aware the public on different issues. Equally important, it should do its best to protect conflicts and violence between and among the communities by disseminating appropriate information to the society.
Arif Abdulkadir, an Author and a translator, on his part said that media has soft power to influence the minds’ of the people positively. This, in other word, can change the minds of the people gradually by educating, entertaining and informing in the form of news, programs, documentaries, and advertisements. The most important questions, however, are for what purpose the media practitioners use their media and how far they know their real power on influencing their audiences positively or negatively.
He said that many countries in the world have changed the lives of their people by using the media properly and effectively. For example, Ghana is properly employing its media to free its own citizens from poverty. It uses media to modernize the agricultural sector and to change the lives of Ghanaians. Not only Ghana but India also is utilizing its media effectively to realize its poverty reduction strategy.
It is difficult to say that the Ethiopian media institutions are playing their important roles in terms of shaping the minds of Ethiopians positively. Some of the private television and radio stations are more sensitive to political issues and tend to pursue their own businesses rather than entertaining societal issues. They have forgotten their social responsibilities. This means they give low coverage for social issues that change the lives of many Ethiopians, he reiterated.
“Relatively, social issues that are used to change the minds of citizens positively are entertained by books even if there are some publications which promote violence among citizens”, he indicated.
All media institutions should work in more responsible way and must understand and bind to their professional ethics – their duties and rights. Media institutions and professionals must realize that the fate of the country and its peoples is at the hands of them: as mismanagement of media can construct or damage the country and its people, he remarked.
Gebretsion Mehari, Lecturer at Mekelle University in the Department of Journalism and Communication, said that media has the power to construct and deconstruct the country.
To him, public opinion could not be shaped by merely news coverage, but it should be supported with continuous and follow up programs.
Media has very great power especially for developing nations. Comparatively, peoples in developing countries are illiterate than peoples in developed nations. So, media is used to create awareness about different issues, he stated.
Many of our media and journalists come to the industry with their political agendas. He said, “If you come with your political agenda, you will be obsessed to your own interest and for the success of your agendas turning a deaf ear to the whole society.”
Countries like Brazil, Canada, Belgium, and England changed the lives of their peoples by using their media and by entertaining diverse voices and views. These countries understood the power and responsibility of their media and they use the media properly and effectively to change the minds of their people positively.
“But, when we come to our country, their role in shaping the minds of the communities positively and uniting them is not at the desired level. As we seen in the past months that some media institutions preach ethnic based conflict and disseminate hate speeches in their news pieces, programs and documentaries. We should not see media as a luxury thing. Using media to change the country is not an option. It is mandatory,” he further said.
The media should entertain not only political issues but economic, culture and social issues to change our country, he suggested.
The Ethiopian Herald May 1/2019
BY ABDUREZAK MOHAMMED
