Saturday, April 17, 2010

The bad effect of reading newspaper nowadays...



What Happen to the Good News???


Whatever happens to good news? I mean seriously, did you read the paper today? I didn’t read it all of course since only a fraction of it had caused me to turn away… what are the main attraction of the newspaper these days? Rapes? Child abuse? Murder? Violence? Astaghfirullah….

Why is that so? What happen to stories of the launching the “going green” program that proves to be a beneficial for the future generation or the story of the girl from the poor family that found abundance of success? Well if it’s in there, the ratio to all the negatives stories is probably 1:10…

example of a "good news"


example of a "bad news"

Why do we read the news?

Most or should I say all would response “to get to know the current issues.” Okay, so what is the function of that current issue? If you read about rapes and murder, so know you know about it, what are you going to do about it? Improve safety? AH HA!!! That’s a good story! So ask ourselves again, if it’s improving safety we are looking for, therefore is there a reason for us to get to know the details of the story?

Journalist nowadays, when they say they get the story, they really go and get it all alright… Just read the news and you know what I mean. If the story was rape, sometimes the names, gender, age, occupation, ethnicity, religion, place, time, the sequence of events that occur, the reason behind the drama, to some extent, they even tell the story like rephrasing an “adult” or 18-SX story. The readers, with an ability to imagine will, well, they will imagine of course. How can we not imagine a story when we are reading it right? Especially when the story has very good details. The same goes with other stories; murder, fraud, child abuse, and so many other problems.

If we still insist on reading these stories, ask ourselves again. “What is the purpose of me reading this story?” To improve myself or just to get the “hot” details? Nauzubillah… If we want it improve our good values and avoid any problems, even without these stories we should still improve ourselves. Is it not enough that we do what is right in the society, avoid what is bad and everyday pray that God will gives us safety. Is it the environment that determines our safety or is it God that determines everything? If we say, what if God wants to test us and make us a victim of a corrupt environment? Well, even without a corrupt environment, if He wants to tests us, will there be anything to stop Him?

The way I see if we want protection from the wrongdoings of others, the best protection is protection from God. Again, here comes the function of “amar makruf and nahi munkar”. There is a good reason why Allah wants us to do good, avoid evil and support good, prevent evil in others too. Amar makruf alone is not enough… Doing good and avoid evil alone is not enough… Support what is good and prevent what is evil…

Why dwell on the negative side of a story?

Whatever we do in life, usually we like to do something that have a good benefit to us. Like I said earlier, if we read the news to improve on our good values, is there a reason to dwell on the negative side of the story? Can’t they just go straight to the point? For example, “cases of rapes had been happening quite frequent lately especially among the teenagers. The prime minister advices all parents to be cautious of the whereabouts of their children. The government is also launching a “Remaja Bijak Jauhi Zina” program at all local school, in hope to reduce social problem among students.”…. If only…(~_~”)

What I am trying to say is, we should stop focusing on the negative side of the story and start focusing on ways to improve instead. This is the job for the newspaper! If the newspaper does not do that, then why should we read the news at all? Not only it’s a waste of money and a dark cloud over our sunny minds, it can also spread evil………

The role of the news in spreading evil

Do you realize that news has season? For example, couple of years ago, it was the black metal era. Almost all the news has black metal stories. Now, the problem is still around, but the stories are not a hotspot in the news anymore. Apparently, the problem is also not a hotspot anymore too. If we think logically the soiled mind of some people these days, if a stories is not popular, why should they go on to give their heart and minds into it? It’s the nature of humans who seek fun and enjoyment in life will focused their attention on the popular stuff nowadays. I think it’s quite obvious.

Another reason is that news sometimes gives ideas. Think about it, if the first person to use private video recordings as a threat was not on the news, do you think the method would be so popular today? People don’t read minds of people living thousand miles away from them; they know about ideas of the diabolical minds of others by reading the news. Soon enough some of them become diabolical themselves. These bad ideas are also seen in movies and dramas.

What should we do?

Well, if you want to become a journalist, you can correct this problem straight to its root. If not, we can stop reading the news that will not gives us any good benefit and start publishing our on news on ways to improve. Like what I am doing now…J

Last but not least you can share this with everyone you know and let us move forward to a better life. make it so that in the future all news should…

“stop dwelling on the negatives side of a story and start focusing on ways to improve”

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

By Brother Alwi Alatas

very good article. The problem is, for most journalists and news corps 'bad news is good news.' Many readers also think that when everything ok, that's means there is no news. But when something bad happen, they want to know and buy newspapers or watch TV and increase the rating of the news program.

However, I've heard about a teenager who create a website that containing only good/ positive news (but I forget the site address). I'm agrre with you that we have to start something like this