Electronic media has revolutionized in Pakistan for last few years in Pakistan. However, this growth and revolution ends up with few questions in my mind; as representing Pakistan as a country to the outside world by TV Channels, it us for sure their responsibility to promote the almost every sector of Pakistan.
During last few years TV shows have made the viewers addicted of Talk Shows, massive political issues and terrorism in Pakistan. If we survey all channels in Pakistan, we come to an easy conclusion that electronic media is playing very little to get out of this politics and terrorism dilemma.
When we see other countries, they give almost equal time to every topic, ranging from Begging to Education Sector, from violence to Art Work, from Music to Business & Finance Sector, from Books to Mobile & Telecom, from Fitness to Hospitals, from Singers to Politicians, means all possible sectors are covered by them to provide the maximum possible details to the viewers. However, in Pakistan we see coverage of mentioned categories’’ news as supporting items in their news bulletins only. It is to be noted that we badly lack in research work and documentaries for all topics other than Politics and terrorism.
Information Technology, especially Software and Web technology is one of most ignored topic by TV Channels. I don’t remember any IT Professional being interviewed by any Talk Shows.
May be it is a reason of the lack of technical knowledge about Software and Web Technology in our local journalists. It is a matter of fact that our journalists come from a background which is for sure not competitive enough to produce technology writers or IT reporters.
We see the same situation in print media, where most of reports are reproduced from web or they print Press Releases only.
It is my request to the electronic media that, try to retrieve hidden talent with-in the country who have done something for Pakistan and try to un-cover them. It would be great if we could see Geo TV going to a base station and telling us how telecom tower actually works, or if they could cover PTCL’s data center… Let’s hope things will get better with time.