M Bilal Hamza<\/p>\n
The dilemma is that we listen to reply, not to understand, which is the case with our media, tout ensemble<\/p>\n
If ranting program anchors, foaming at the mouth with rage while trying to bog down adversaries with stabbing remarks, impress you or leave you awestruck at the moment, congratulations, you\u2019re exactly the kind of viewership they\u2019re doing their shows for. Without having to go digging deep into the tranquillity of this phenomenon of getting inspired by vilification, slanderous encounters, just know that you\u2019ve been programmed to consume tirades, not effective narratives\u2013anything contrary to denunciation would either go unnoticed or lack viewership hence out spacing intellectual niche even further. The dilemma is that we listen to reply, not to understand, which is the case with our media, tout ensemble. Anne Morrow Lindbergh hits the bull\u2019s eye when she coins: \u201cGood communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.\u201d
\nWell, honestly, if news anchors with twerking loops in their sensational news-reading-rendition hit your right chords, kudos, you\u2019re another value addition on the list of \u2018target audience\u2019\u2014that the media outlets bend their backward over churning out. The provenance of such sensationalism hit the market almost one and a half decades ago when this form of news-anchoring started getting accepted as a clich\u00e9. This wouldn\u2019t have been a bad induction, had the Pakistani news media industry known that sensitization only worked with specific news items, a scoop to be precise, and not with every single content. Hilarious as it may sound, but hearing an anchor finding a dram, through his voice, off a non-dramatic news item leave you reeling with disbelief!
\nMoreover, if infotainment media doesn\u2019t cease to amaze you with its lewd puns and one-liners, leaving the audience convulsing into laughing stints, you\u2019ve no idea how accurately they\u2019ve poised their shotgun on your satirical instincts, which are now so immune to obscenity, salacity and vulgarism. You may have a bone to pick with me over this, yet I press that there is a fine line between satire and indecency, isn\u2019t it? If on one hand, we advocate a society void of any gender discrimination, body shaming, misogyny and patriarchy, why would our dichotomous beings dare to watch content infested with squelches directing at people\u2019s body shapes, one-liner picking at someone\u2019s face cuts and unrefined humour disrespecting men and women?
\nIf the only sport, off 800+ globally, comes to light your screen is cricket, pat on the back, you\u2019ve earned it for yourself. This is exactly what you desire to see, consume your screen time for, invest money into, buy tickets for, go frenzy towards and admire nonetheless.
\nI\u2019d rather suggest reading out one of my pieces: https:\/\/dailytimes.com.pk\/836593\/hunting-for-an-olympic-champion-in-a-cricket-frenzied-country\/
\nIn this piece, I tried to shed some light on sports culture in Pakistan: \u201cThe fact of the matter is that we don\u2019t want to spend a penny on anything other than \u201ccricket.\u201d Sports facilities have been confined to cricket clubs mostly as open grounds are either taken up by construction mafias or paved for routes. Besides some exceptions, Pakistan Sports Board and other \u201cill-functioning\u201d federations are littering with crooks who claim hefty paychecks, damage the institutional integrity and flee away after heavy-duty marauding and plundering\u2014the story of our institutions\u2019 lives.\u201d Let me do a bit of value-addition stating that our media has had its cherry-picking\u2013having checked the pulses of public inclinations\u2013which came out into giving 98 per cent coverage to cricket while leaving every single sport aside. What an absolute disaster! Imagine a nation acing the world with hockey skills now crumbling and dying on the table, down in the dumps!
\nAs a nation, you must know that if a mediocre, a commoner or a bromide\u2014to be precise\u2013starts getting the lion\u2019s share of screen-appearance, do intellectual shows with all the non-intellectuality; the ones to be lavished with enrolments should be you since that bromide is your reflection. He evokes the nation\u2019s intellectual dip, on the whole, and which has fallen on the bottom rung already. If you\u2019re trying to seek for sane familiar faces hitting national screens lately, probably no doughnut for you, since you\u2019ve chocked them to death, professionally; your benchmarking for intellect-driven content has filtered them off and all you are left with is a declivity of rationalism and saneness.
\nIf you don\u2019t see a single good national song, patriotic vocal surfacing to hit the music industry for ages, hats off to you, you\u2019ve devoured professionals those with souls. You are now pretty much complacent with middling composers, singers and artists. The outcome is not an anticlimax, it was about time! The most off-key is, the least off-screen is. In this day and age, people belt out pathetic renditions, hop around, and get bang for the bucks and booming, whereas the textbook singing goes in tatters. What that one national song do I not remember from my childhood and adolescence times, and what that one national song should I remember from the last decade that stirred the whole nation?
\nIn addition, if you gauge someone\u2019s success with soaring likes, proliferating subscriptions, augmenting following and growing fans, job well done. You\u2019ve excavated ramblers on purpose, rather boozers, who\u2019re selling you out the wine bottles in the guise of Turkey\u2019s pine honey. Now, no matter if the alcohol is prohibited for selling to under-agers, health peril, immorality for faith-practitioners, they\u2019d sell you out anyways\u2013with no regrets, qualms and scruples. They\u2019d keep on feeding you their content; left right and centre, until one day you fall apart only to be thrown in the same hole that you opened up once, a grave now, a black hole, strictly speaking!
\nIf your lust knows no boundaries and keeps on exhausting your being on dark webs\u2019 content, be thankful for the world of enchantment that you\u2019ve fenced around yourselves because this is what you greeted with open arms. You\u2019re now sitting in the middle with the most vulnerable status, ready to be quashed by health perils, financial crises, deteriorated mental peace and stress challenges; if not today, sooner!
\nIf you see a self-centred egoist, oo sorry an analyst, occupying screen every single day late in the evening with a plethora of fallacious red herring and trying to splash out the intellect produced at the humongous (area wise) backyard of his farmhouse, know that your audibility deserves a subjective opinion, not fact, and your eyeballs merit a self-serving perspective, not truth. You\u2019re a trap leashed by a snare of sweet threads.
\nYou blaming the media for what? If you blame the media industry for being mediocre, below par, subnormal and cheesy, know that you are to be blamed in the very first place. You\u2019ve no one to hold responsible for all this, your choice your selection. There you go\u2014mediocre media for mediocre people!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
M Bilal Hamza The dilemma is that we listen to reply, not to understand, which is the case with our media, tout ensemble If ranting program anchors, foaming at the mouth with rage while trying to bog down adversaries with stabbing remarks, impress you or leave you awestruck at the moment, congratulations, you\u2019re exactly the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3407,4354,4355],"class_list":{"0":"post-245961","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-article","7":"tag-m-bilal-hamza","8":"tag-mediocre-media","9":"tag-mediocre-people"},"yoast_head":"\n