The Impact of Television on Modern Life
English Essay on "The Impact of Television on Modern Life"
TV transmission is one of those marvels of modern science which have revolutionised the life of every man, woman and child in all countries of the world. Since the number of TV fans already running into billions is multiplying daily, it is but natural to assume that this mass propaganda-cum entertainment medium has an iron grip on the imagination as well a thinking faculties of those who remain glued to the small screen for hours together. As it is no easy matter to wean drug-addicts from the embrace of hashish, marijuana or cocaine or cigarette smokers from that of nicotine, it is a task almost incapable of accomplishment by ordinary mortals to break the habit of spending long hours before TV screens. The intimate association of’ viewers with TV programmes, therefore, is moulding and shaping their life in a thousand different ways. These programmes include feature films which instruct them not only what they should eat, drink and wear, and how they should reshape their dining, drawing and bathrooms, but also how to commit murders, robberies and rapes and make the most effective use of instruments of villainy, violence and crime to rise from rags to riches.educationsight.blogspot.com No other mass media is as effective a catalyst of change in the life of modern man as is TV today. During the last half century it has almost reshaped our civilization and ushered us into a world that is fare removed from that of our ancestors who lived on this planet during the time of the First World War. TV has become that chamber or corner or the human brain which harbours thoughts or ideas, which is the seat of individuality and which enables man to exercise his judgment. In other words, media lords, exercising their enormous money-power, have spread their tentacles over the thinking, feeling and reasoning faculties of the vast army of TV viewers.
To instruct, to delight and to make readily and instantly available information material concerning events happening in different parts of the world are the major objectives of television networks. The benefits of different programmes telecast by them reach all sections of society. But the greatest beneficiaries are Politicians, particularly the ruling elite who own or control them, capturing world markets and governments and for tightening their hold on the levers of power. In America networks like the CBS and the CNN decide the fate of presidential hopefuls. Their powerful and decision-making propaganda machinery is ruthlessly employed to catapult their favourite candidate into the Oval Office by Lionizing his leadership stature, administrative abilities and charismatic image, and painting with a tarnished brush all God-given or acquired gifts of his rival. In countries where television hounds of democracy have been unleashed to bite or maul the electoral process there can be no fair or free elections. That is one reason why all the opposition parties in the Indian Parliament are clamoring for privatisation of Doordarshan. But the Prasar Bharati Bill meant to decentralize this institution is hanging fire, and the ruling party continues to have its monopolistic hold on this most vital organ of moulding public opinion through information propaganda.
How quickly and effectively correct Information along with visual scenes of happenings relating to, for example, Desert Storm, is telecast by networks was demonstrated by TV camera crews who sent shots of American Tomahawks and precision bombs splintering steel bunkers of Baghdad or shooting Iraqi soldiers fleeing from Kuwait in their vehicles as sitting ducks. Transmission of live scenes of fighting is done by satellite cameras. While sitting at Home you can see what is happening in Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia or Moscow. You can see how crowds of people prevent American solders from performing their self-appointed duty of restoring democracy in Haiti and placing the popularly elected President Aristide into the seat of power. The picture of General Aidid’s tribal soldiers dragging a captured US peace-keeping man along the streets filled with cheering crowds was seen by all Americans on their TV screens. This compelled the US to withdraw all its peace-keeping forces and even food-distributing agencies from Somalia. Muslims, Croats and Serbs, shooting and killing their ethnic rivals in Bosnia’s towns and villages or huddled in besieged pockets of resistance or refugee camps with rockets falling on them, are seen almost everyday by TV viewers. Boris Yeltsin’s loyal soldiers pounding Russia’s Parliamentary building with guns, tanks and rockets were also shown to the world by TV media men. TV programmes, particularly telecast by cable networks, are dynamiting the moral bas of society by projecting on the small screen pictures of violence, sex-related crimes, mugging of innocent people in streets and other offences of a similar nature which teenagers and adults learn to practise in order to exhibit their bravado, daredevilry and defiance of law and order. These networks refuse to be disciplined by conventional morality or laws of civilised society because they are always eager to make quick commercial gains. In America the average child sees something like 8,000 television murders by the time he is twenty-one. This for him is a soul-shattering experience which teaches him that violence is the way of life. This western anti-culture is now beginning to invade homes where cable television is fast spreading its tentacles of violence. So instead of protecting society from the dangert3 of drugs and gun, reducing the homicide rate and quelling violence in metropolitan centres, cable TV is pushing the present generation of teenagers down the slope of disaster.
Americans who are the greatest TV fans in the world are beginning to realise that television movies promote violence, contribute to mind rot and become the handmaid of the ever-rising crime graph. They know that they are living in a time when the nationwide homicide rate seems to have no upper limit, when juvenile lawlessness masquerades as entertainment and when popular music conveys bestiality and defiance of cherished values of life. The US Senate is seized of the matter and is considering ways and means of combating the culture of violence the networks the promoting in the that country. The cult of violence is excessive, gratuitous sand glamorizing. The Commerce Committee is considering bills to force the industry to ban violence for child audiences and to require parental discretion warnings before violent TV shows. None of these, however, is a foolproof measure. The ultimate answer may be a V chip which would automatically block any TV programme that is rated violent.
The power of television, like the power of the press, is awful. No man, howsoever powerful he may ie, can effectively combat it. TV news hounds did not spare a searching analysis of the alleged personal relationship of the world famous singer Michael Jackson with a teenager He had to face the most humiliating ordeal of his life when he was forced to undergo a strip-search. His accuser, a 13-year-old boy, brought child-molestation charges against him, and gave the police a detailed description of his private parts. The rock star denounced what he described as sensational converge of the allegations by “the incredible, terrible, mass media”, both print and visual. Even rulers of super powers knuckle under the power of television networks. The whole world knows how president George Both of America had to order ceasefire in the Gulf War of 1991 when TV pictures of Iraqi soldiers fleeing from Kuwait and dying like flies swatted with a giant hand in their tanks and armored vehicles were flashed across the world. American audiences reacted to this gratuitous punishment meted out to a surrendering army with horror and indignation. At that time they ceased to admire the modernity of precision bombs and state-of-the-art weapons of General Shwarzkopf. TV is a media so powerful that it can instantly mould public opinion, bring far-reaching policy reversals of governments, and even push into seats of power little known personalities after boosting their election prospects with the most effective use of its image-making and propaganda channels.
All this, however, does not mean that television is doing little good to the world. It saves time, money and the bother of travelling to far off places in search of objects that arouse your curiosity and give you thrill and delight. Sitting comfortable in your home in an armchair you can watch the performance of any man, bird or beast on land, in the air or in sea water. This circling-round-the-globe-picture-catching capacity of the TV camera installed inside a satellite enables you to watch the entire panorama of Olympic games, the summits of world figures deciding the fate of mankind, famous cricketers setting new bowling or batting records and a thousand other eye-catching events that take place almost every day in all countries of the World. If the technological advance in the field of television continues at the same accelerating pace, the time is not far off when we shall view on the small screen pictures or the activities and ways of life of extra-terrestrial human beings who are believed to be living in certain earth-like regions of distant galaxies.
To instruct, to delight and to make readily and instantly available information material concerning events happening in different parts of the world are the major objectives of television networks. The benefits of different programmes telecast by them reach all sections of society. But the greatest beneficiaries are Politicians, particularly the ruling elite who own or control them, capturing world markets and governments and for tightening their hold on the levers of power. In America networks like the CBS and the CNN decide the fate of presidential hopefuls. Their powerful and decision-making propaganda machinery is ruthlessly employed to catapult their favourite candidate into the Oval Office by Lionizing his leadership stature, administrative abilities and charismatic image, and painting with a tarnished brush all God-given or acquired gifts of his rival. In countries where television hounds of democracy have been unleashed to bite or maul the electoral process there can be no fair or free elections. That is one reason why all the opposition parties in the Indian Parliament are clamoring for privatisation of Doordarshan. But the Prasar Bharati Bill meant to decentralize this institution is hanging fire, and the ruling party continues to have its monopolistic hold on this most vital organ of moulding public opinion through information propaganda.
How quickly and effectively correct Information along with visual scenes of happenings relating to, for example, Desert Storm, is telecast by networks was demonstrated by TV camera crews who sent shots of American Tomahawks and precision bombs splintering steel bunkers of Baghdad or shooting Iraqi soldiers fleeing from Kuwait in their vehicles as sitting ducks. Transmission of live scenes of fighting is done by satellite cameras. While sitting at Home you can see what is happening in Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia or Moscow. You can see how crowds of people prevent American solders from performing their self-appointed duty of restoring democracy in Haiti and placing the popularly elected President Aristide into the seat of power. The picture of General Aidid’s tribal soldiers dragging a captured US peace-keeping man along the streets filled with cheering crowds was seen by all Americans on their TV screens. This compelled the US to withdraw all its peace-keeping forces and even food-distributing agencies from Somalia. Muslims, Croats and Serbs, shooting and killing their ethnic rivals in Bosnia’s towns and villages or huddled in besieged pockets of resistance or refugee camps with rockets falling on them, are seen almost everyday by TV viewers. Boris Yeltsin’s loyal soldiers pounding Russia’s Parliamentary building with guns, tanks and rockets were also shown to the world by TV media men. TV programmes, particularly telecast by cable networks, are dynamiting the moral bas of society by projecting on the small screen pictures of violence, sex-related crimes, mugging of innocent people in streets and other offences of a similar nature which teenagers and adults learn to practise in order to exhibit their bravado, daredevilry and defiance of law and order. These networks refuse to be disciplined by conventional morality or laws of civilised society because they are always eager to make quick commercial gains. In America the average child sees something like 8,000 television murders by the time he is twenty-one. This for him is a soul-shattering experience which teaches him that violence is the way of life. This western anti-culture is now beginning to invade homes where cable television is fast spreading its tentacles of violence. So instead of protecting society from the dangert3 of drugs and gun, reducing the homicide rate and quelling violence in metropolitan centres, cable TV is pushing the present generation of teenagers down the slope of disaster.
Americans who are the greatest TV fans in the world are beginning to realise that television movies promote violence, contribute to mind rot and become the handmaid of the ever-rising crime graph. They know that they are living in a time when the nationwide homicide rate seems to have no upper limit, when juvenile lawlessness masquerades as entertainment and when popular music conveys bestiality and defiance of cherished values of life. The US Senate is seized of the matter and is considering ways and means of combating the culture of violence the networks the promoting in the that country. The cult of violence is excessive, gratuitous sand glamorizing. The Commerce Committee is considering bills to force the industry to ban violence for child audiences and to require parental discretion warnings before violent TV shows. None of these, however, is a foolproof measure. The ultimate answer may be a V chip which would automatically block any TV programme that is rated violent.
The power of television, like the power of the press, is awful. No man, howsoever powerful he may ie, can effectively combat it. TV news hounds did not spare a searching analysis of the alleged personal relationship of the world famous singer Michael Jackson with a teenager He had to face the most humiliating ordeal of his life when he was forced to undergo a strip-search. His accuser, a 13-year-old boy, brought child-molestation charges against him, and gave the police a detailed description of his private parts. The rock star denounced what he described as sensational converge of the allegations by “the incredible, terrible, mass media”, both print and visual. Even rulers of super powers knuckle under the power of television networks. The whole world knows how president George Both of America had to order ceasefire in the Gulf War of 1991 when TV pictures of Iraqi soldiers fleeing from Kuwait and dying like flies swatted with a giant hand in their tanks and armored vehicles were flashed across the world. American audiences reacted to this gratuitous punishment meted out to a surrendering army with horror and indignation. At that time they ceased to admire the modernity of precision bombs and state-of-the-art weapons of General Shwarzkopf. TV is a media so powerful that it can instantly mould public opinion, bring far-reaching policy reversals of governments, and even push into seats of power little known personalities after boosting their election prospects with the most effective use of its image-making and propaganda channels.
All this, however, does not mean that television is doing little good to the world. It saves time, money and the bother of travelling to far off places in search of objects that arouse your curiosity and give you thrill and delight. Sitting comfortable in your home in an armchair you can watch the performance of any man, bird or beast on land, in the air or in sea water. This circling-round-the-globe-picture-catching capacity of the TV camera installed inside a satellite enables you to watch the entire panorama of Olympic games, the summits of world figures deciding the fate of mankind, famous cricketers setting new bowling or batting records and a thousand other eye-catching events that take place almost every day in all countries of the World. If the technological advance in the field of television continues at the same accelerating pace, the time is not far off when we shall view on the small screen pictures or the activities and ways of life of extra-terrestrial human beings who are believed to be living in certain earth-like regions of distant galaxies.
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