Our Collective Conscience Is Lost; People’s Lives Are Pawns On A Political Chessboard

By Vishwamithra1984 –June 29, 2016

“There is no witness so terrible and accuser so powerful than conscience which dwells within us.”~ Sophocles (496 BC – 406 BC)

The manner in which the world media is covering significant events, the twists and turns it renders to the core substance of a major event and the preordained definitions it ascribes to the personalities and communities who generate these events are a way beyond comprehension. Whether it’s the so-called ‘free media’ of the West or state-controlled media in closed societies such as the Middle-East, North Korea and Cuba or even an open society like India, the story is the same. Sensationalism is substituting for authenticity; commercialism has invaded the minds of those who control the machinery of the media, both print and electronic, and in order to obtain maximum ratings or readership, newspapers have fallen to the level of tabloids and television and social media have fallen to the level of downright nihilism.

For example, the coverage the latest airline debacle, the missing EgyptAir Plane Flight 804, received on worldwide television screens was pure sensationalism and they did not even begin to talk about those 66 people who were aboard the flight until the next morning. Each and every person on that flight, including the crew, had a family. They were fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons or daughters of somebody. The loss of each one of them is being mourned by his or her family. The coverage of the human angle of the story was subordinated to ratings; the anguish and despair caused to those families took a back seat while sensationalized tidbits such as the location of the Black Box- of course, its critical discovery would be immensely helpful in finding out what took place immediately prior to the disappearance of the plane- and the political shades that were painted to suit the particular network that covered the event hit the headlines. No argument is made here to belittle the enormous validity and relevance of incidental facts and figures regarding the actual crash or disappearance of Flight 804. But the absence or lack of arresting attention to the human side of the story is glaring and cannot be understated.

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