Media and Ethics

It was a long awaited weekend and I preferred to stay at home. What could be better than exploring the world through my idiot box? So I turned on my TV just to come across a fairness cream commercial where in two females were being interviewed for the position of Air hostess and were compared on the basis of their complexions and amazingly fairer one got the lucrative job. I couldn’t resist brooding upon this particular episode, however rather than straining my grey cells I preferred to change the channel in search of a better program and to my amazement I came across another commercial where in an old man was telling his friend about his son who was being showered with innumerable job offers just because his son completed a short term computer course from Not-So- very-Popular computer institute.

Lots of questions came up to my mind-Is it right to portray that being just fair can fetch you a job? Would it be justified to tempt youngsters to pursue short term courses and demean the significance of comprehensive educational programmes designed after extensive research. Is it all about making money or does Media have moral responsibility as well. Aren’t they deviating from their sole objective with which Media was formed i.e. revealing Truth in front of Public. And all this for just few coins. People are being misled not only by such fairness cream commercials rather they are also being forced to believe that just being fair or doing module IT courses could fetch them a Glam job. We are being so inhumane that we are not only forgetting about human values and focusing on superficial stuff rather we are forcing our young generation to do the same. The creators of such commercials fail to realise the impact which such promotions lays on the people who are not fair complexioned and leaves them with a permanent impression that their dull complexion is a curse and the biggest hurdle in their life. And imagine the fate of a student who faces the harsh reality where there is no job for him and all his dreams are being shattered and then he realizes that all those Glam Jobs requires much more than a pretty complexion and short term module courses. On top of that just think of those people in small town for whom advertisements are the reflections of Metropolitan cities and what if they imbibe these advertisements thinking that such institutes might fetch their son/daughter a good job dumping their hard earned money as a fees for the course of such institutes just to realise that after an year or two their child would come back to them with Nothing.
Such commercials not only mislead students by sending a signal that they should take a shorter path rather they are playing with innocent lives. This also demeans the significant researches and their executors who are behind the design of comprehensive course curriculums and recruitment processes. This kind of promotion fails to realise that until and unless a person understands the significance of such processes and the hard work behind them, he won’t understand the amount of input required to get the desired output. This reminds me of an excellent example of Plug and socket. Wherein for every plug there is a socket and even slightest mismatch doesn’t make the Right Fit. Here people are plugs and organizations are sockets and most of us want to fit into a good socket (organizations) irrespective of the match of the socket. Rather one should try to be the right Plug and if the socket doesn’t matches then either leave the socket or upgrade to match the socket. Be the right match and find the Right match.
In fact Media should use its immense power and undeterred access to reach out to millions of people to encourage them in abolishing these material practices. It’s high time and we all as a single entity should realize that it’s time to lay a solid foundation for our next generations and that can be done by showing the right path to them rather than misleading them.