It has become a common practice to break the news without fully analysing its effects on the public or individuals
LAHORE: In the past decade, the media in Pakistan has seen huge changes and it has achieved drastic heights. Whether it is the print or electronic media, what is now needed is for media practitioners to ensure that they follow certain ethical norms while fulfilling their duties. The media is an important pillar of a civilised, democratic state. It plays a significant role in the representation and image-making of any nation abroad. Its major duty is to inform the public, to guide the people, to keep them up-to-date and, moreover, to entertain readers and viewers. This duty can only be fulfilled sincerely if laws and ethics are followed with a true sense of responsibility, along with adherence to the principles of freedom of speech.
In the Pakistani media, it has become a common practice to just break the news without fully analysing what its after-effects might be on the public or on individuals’ personal lives. There has been an increasing trend towards interference in personal lives of political personalities.
The need of the hour is to look into this important issue. There should be better control over the media’s interference in individuals’ personal lives. Everybody is entitled to their privacy and to their own ways of living; nobody has the right to criticise another’s actions and doings in the personal sphere if they are under the ambit of the law.
Khadija Malik
Published in The Express Tribune, November 8th, 2015.
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