Media plays a vital role in a democratic country like India where public opinion has major respect. Media is regarded as the fourth pillar of the society, the other three being legislative, executive, and the judiciary. It is even said to be a ‘mirror’ and ‘moulder’ of public opinion.
In other words, we may say that the public replicates or follows as well as accumulates opinions and decisions through the media and the information displayed by it. People not only obtain real information about public matters from the news media but also pick up how much prominence to assign to a subject on the basis of the highlighting done on it in the news.
Internet including e-mails and blogs, televisions, radio, and newspapers play a significant role in the formation of outlooks and opinions of the general public. News media highlights the personalities (Politicians, film industry people, and other celebrities) and issues and the common man believes and forms an opinion about them according to the news.
Today’s picture of the media is entirely different. The public can talk about the incidents happening not only in the country but also outside the geographical boundaries only due to awareness created by media.
Media can aid public involvement through advocating issues and transforming knowledge, skills, and technologies to the people.
Awareness about various rural development programmes, propagation of family planning could be spread by using the media. It may covers many students on a single platform through its educational programmes.
Youth exposure to media has increased evidently in the past few years. The wrage of personalized forms of media and social networking sites has exponentially expanded. Also contributing to greater awareness of political issues and prospects for public activities.
Today, individuals not only get information about government form news sites, but they also respond by posting their opinions on the news and initiate discussions on various forms or by joining groups on facebook. Young people are at ease in forming their opinion about any incident as they learn about then in detail through the media. It is important to mention an example to show the positive effect of media. It is important for the media to report a fair and unbiased manner. The media should apprehend the consequential importance of events happening around and report issues in an impartial ad dispassionate manner. It should bring all aspects of incidents before the public.
Ignoring the point of conduct will lead to damage to democracy as hiding any part of the story results in the creation of wrong and prejudicial public opinion. It is thus important to understand that media plays a crucial role in generating public opinion. It affects the mindset of people and hence it should present the matter in an unbiased way.
The information reaches door to door through media. Hence, it is social and moral responsibility to present a factual and authentic picture of any incident without thinking much about money-making or TRP generation. With such a huge responsibility towards the people, media should be more sensible and alert instead of a causal approach towards an event because it is they on whom the general public is relying.
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