Haiti, Cuba, Turkey... what are these? Till yesterday these were names on maps, pin points on the globe that evoked abysmal reactions from scattered folks remotely associated with these places through kith, kin, wealth, or whim.
Depression, recession, regression, repression... what do these mean? Till a decade back these were concepts that exploited the pages of a thick bound economic text that lay waste in the far corners of a library seldom visited by anyone beside goggly eyed nerds chasing dreams of financial vital statistics in a desperation over the inability to score numbers within their super set of colleagues.
Hate crimes, racial wars, teen pregnancies, substance abuse... where did they origin? Till a history ago these were independent stray instances that got institutionalized in script and scene, text and score creating copy cat followings propelling an occurrence into an event.
What is the common thread tying each of these phenomenon together? Accessible media. Apart from the fact that each of these is a truth that occurred somewhere, sometime, somehow; there was nothing more to these. One day's discussion, the next day's faded memory. That was it.
Before common media became available to the masses calamities happened and made way for something else. News was a compendium of good and bad, joys and sorrows, remorse and exultance.
Today the front page news is a mash-up of all the possible social and natural ills that pockmark human habitation. Glad tidings are blocked for the even-numbered rarely-read pages of newspapers and fillers in the newscasts that rarely evoke any attention warranting a second mention or a follow-up.
The world is getting sadder each day. Mournful melancholy manipulates the airwaves. Everything that we are communicated with is an attempt to squeeze the tears from our eyes and discomfort from our hearts in order to get us to surrender our guilt ridden wallets in lieu of sympathetic experiences that we narrowly avoided.
Can we have more responsible media that reports incidents without dramatizing them into potboilers. Can intelligent media not be synonymous with gory media. Can we drink our cuppa teas without experiencing a tempest in the teacup?
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