Media and 'vulgarity’

Why Veena Malik and Mansoor Ijaz get the most attention ? The answer to this is just simple: the societies that are kept entertained are more manageable in spite of hunger, poverty, and lawlessness

The question of moral policing by media Maya Khan-style, has justifiably raised the public outcry. However, an important debate regarding media’s wider role viz a viz morality and vulgarity has largely gone missing.

A few weeks back, there was hue and cry in media over the Veena Malik's topless photograph with an ISI tatoo, run by an Indian Magazine, forced me to think that  what does actually constitute a vulgarity ? Why do Mansoor Ijaz and Veena Malik get more attention and coverage than other more pressing and crucial social issues ? Is Veena Malik's said photograph more nasty than polluted drinking water, anarchic traffic, exploding (faulty) cylinders, fake medicines and the brutal power of policemen and revenue officials ?  

One of the tactics used by the politicians and other players of the game of power and privileges is to project the non-issues or blow them out of proportion, so that, real issues always remain hidden. We can see the issue of Veena Malik's topless posing with an ISI tatoo in this context. Forty years ago, Dr. Mahbub-ul-Haq had said that bureaucrats whisk away Rs 40 billion annually and this figure has now increased manifold.

Corruption has so much become a norm of society that it does not look vulgar in any way or any more. Due to the rampant corruption in nearly all fields of life ( I do not exclude army, although it is difficult to know the nature and volume of corruption in this department due to the secrecy of its operations in the name of so called national security), chasm between the rich and poor is widening by each passing day.

According to a recent report published in The News (Dec. 20, 2011), a vast majority of Pakistan's 180 million people do not even have access to drinkable water (this fact has been observed by myself during my service  in Agricultural Development Bank  as I toured vast areas of the Punjab, especially districts Bahawalnagar's tehsils Fort Abbas, Haroonabad, Michinabad etc as an audit officer). Lack of drinking water (while Coke and Pepsi is available even in the remotest  areas 24/7) to the vast majority of people living in a geographical cum political boundary called Pakistan is just one among many other innumerable problems faced by society for long, without any solution in sight. Few instances are cited below:

- According to some press reports, more that 50 boys belonging to poor families were found shackled in a basement of a madressah (religious school) in Karachi. More interesting is the fact that as soon as TV channels broke this news, human right activists and N.G.Os came out blaming madressahs for all the troubles that afflict this land of the pure (getting purer with each passing day). Sadly, they do not hold responsible the real factors i.e extremely skewed distribution of resources and opportunities.

- Then, there are fake pirs (spiritual healers) in every nook and cranny of the country (or even in  power for several decades?) looting ignorant men and women and raping their poor female victims at every available opportunity. According to a news item (The News, Jan. 19, 2012) a session judge indicted a faith healer accused of raping a woman. Such events are a routine matter in the society, but no serious attention is paid to these.

- Another absurd or funny news (The News, Jan. 15, 2012) is that members of the National Assembly have received perks worth Rs. 120 billions during the last four years and an equal amount was spent on the house and its staff (for doing nothing ?) while Mr. Hafeez Sheikh, the finance minister has paid Rs 26770 as income tax during the last financial year (The News, Dec. 15, 2011).

- According to another news item (Dawn Jan. 22, 2012), in the province of Sind over Rs. 10 billion are being lost by the provincial government on account of salary payment to the ghost or non-existent employees ( but, I wonder even if they were existent and working, what difference would have it made?) Intensity  of  problems of  bonded labour, human trafficking, people dying due to faulty cylinder blasts (due to negligence of OGRA) blowing up roofs of vehicles and burning the poor passengers alive(scores of people have died during the last few months due to these accidents), increasing numbers of fake or spurious/unregistered medicines (more than 100 patients have died within a short span of time due to re-action from a medicine acquired by Punjab Institute of Cardiology, Lahore, as per news report published in The News of Jan. 26, 2012), married women being burnt alive by greedy in-laws,  anarchic traffic, rampant power theft, and complete collapse of the rule of law,  is increasing day by day. But media have its own agenda of whipping up the hype over every non-issue, essentially to meet an insatiable demand for sensationalization , as it struggles to survive in this age of instant news. In the war over television rating points (TRPs) not so long ago, many of the channels went berserk with daily two-hour marriage shows featuring lavish weddings that ran for a whole week. While television becomes desperately hungry for material, bored and intellectually unstimulated viewers gnaw on mindless soaps, sensational news and anything but truth.

The intrinsic tendency of media (including print media) to compress, select, exclude portions of reality and equally intrinsic, irreducible nature of reality produces distortions and contradictions that creates more confusion.   

So why Veena Malik and Mansoor Ijaz get the most attention ? The answer to this is just simple: the societies that are kept entertained are more manageable in spite of hunger, poverty, and lawlessness.