All these years I only
read The Sun till page 3 but couple of years back a friend asked me to read their
sports section for latest football rumors and since then I have been hooked to
that newspaper purely for football gossip. At times I feel that I know when
Posh is pregnant before even Bekham knows about it but all these are rumors,
speculations and gossip with zero factual evidence and readers are well aware
of that. In broadcast media it is a known fact that Fox/Sky are the gossip
queens and yet I prefer BBC over them as if I want authentic news, news that
needs to be backed by facts, I don’t want to hear rumors of rape, gossip on
child slavery and speculations on current affairs, for all of that I have my
Sun.
So what makes something
'gossip' as opposed to 'news'? The difference is subjective - News tends to be:
- of a higher "quality"
- of more relevant
- factual - not speculation/hearsay
As these attributes are debatable what can be
consider news vs what can be considered gossip can vary depending on the person
asked.
In recent days I have been irritated by senseless debates on
this same topic and the worst part is that we are not discussing and footballers life or politicians affair, we
are casually debating that was that girl raped or was she not? Not many are
even willing to find factual evidence before they start spreading this ‘news’ my
facebook feed is filled with asking women to avoid going out, stop driving and
take extra precautions(go out with your man), seriously? For rumor sake, I
think this is some ‘maulvi’ trying to bring Saudi law on women to Pakistan. I
am not saying that that alleged girl is lying but before spreading the rumors it
is our responsibility to find facts rather than use this as a panic button in
our pseudo-intellectual debates.
In Pakistan, news is published based on entertainment value. Many people get their
news from the internet, even blogs. People are more interested in confirming
their own ideas than knowing the truth. I have been brought up in a way that I
still manage to read a newspaper and there are very few newspapers left in
Pakistan which actually are not gossip magazines. Whenever these remaining
newspapers make a mistake in their facts I have always seen them apologizing
and admitting their mistake publically and trust me over the years I might have
come across only a bunch of factual mistakes in these publications.
Our broadcast media is completely
different story, PTV to some extend holds integrity but remember its state
owned channel. Having worked with one of the biggest broadcast network in
Pakistan I have learned the trades of entertainment industry which includes our
very serious news. At times breaking News in Pakistani can be equivalent to Roznama
Jawani publications.
Even though I am very
closely associated to local media, I have managed programming for a News
channel and still working in ad industry, I have stopped watching local TV
channels, news is no more than a joke to me and entertainment is no more than
brainwash for their viewers but surprisingly at times I feel like less informed
when I chat with people around me as they all are heavily engulfed in local
news, I didn’t knew who Sharmila Farooqi was getting married to, what was that
Prado rape story, not even a single version of kidnapping scene at Dolmen Mall
but I did knew Ms Farooqi was getting married, there was some rumor regarding
Prado and there was shooting at Dolmen Mall, this all came from my heavily trusted
print sources with no gossip in them as they could not establish facts. Whereas
people around me had more than enough knowledge to start discussing and
spreading the rumor and making me look like a I don’t know the real story, in
other words start creating panic. Source? Internet and Word of mouth
News in Pakistan is based
on the game ‘Chinese Whisper’ I prefer to break the chain till I get some
facts.
