The quality of content and
discourse of Pakistani Mass Media including print broadcast and online
journalism is not so good due to multidimensional factors. Religious leaders has
bifurcated the religious doctrine from worldly practical life and religious
activities are only limited to reward after death. Sectarianism and extremism
promoted for the vested interests of different community leaders. Broadcast
media has been replaced from state owned media to Saeth (traditional business
man) owned media.
Breaking news culture of the newsrooms and journalistic readiness always prefers
sensational reporting over credible reporting and profit hungry media masters
sacrifice development content over commercial content. Hooking more and more
audience is become the ultimate objective of corporate mass media to receive
advertisements and generating more revenues. In this race of rating mass media
glorify violence, terror, consumerism and obscenity for their commercial
objectives at the same time letting down the editorial & ethical guidelines and
journalistic code of conducts.
All these factors become the cause to wipe out rational attitude and logical
thinking from the society and to promote belief system over educational
learning, dreams after death over gift of existence, fundamentalism over
development and advancement, sectarianism over diversity of thoughts, bullets
over ballots and terrorism over humanitarianism in our society. In addition to
politician’s statement based journalism Pakistani mass media give maximum space
to the criminals and crime related stories but after 9/11 crime stories has been
framed around global terror campaigns and terror stories are become the selling
fodder for the mass media. The societies who sacrificed rational attitude and
logical thinking are deteriorated morally, divested ethically and irresponsible
socially.
Nelson Mandela has said “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul
than the way in which it treats its children”. If we construct a data base
around the current wave of child abuse news stories in the recent past we can
revealed the social and moral degradedness of our society. In which newborn
babies are found from the waste depots, teenagers are kidnapped on the way to
chocolate shops and school going children are raped and murdered.
In the third world countries like Pakistan sexual child abuse is considered the
only kind of abuse while this kind of abuse of abuse is extreme and worse kind
of child abuse. In the developed countries literacy campaigns have been launched
to create awareness in the society about different kinds, symptoms and training
workshops to save the children from any kind of abuse with collaboration of
doctors and journalists while dealing with the victims of child abuse.
The current wave of child abuse in the third world countries is an eye opening
for social activists child health & child rights organizations that child abuse
is worst violation of child rights and more lethal than child diseases. There is
a dire need to launch a literacy campaign in third world countries like Pakistan
to create awareness about the different kind of child abuses.
1. Physical abuse involves hitting, shaking, throwing, poisoning, burning or
scalding, drowning, suffocating or otherwise causing physical harm to a child.
2. Emotional abuse is the persistent emotional ill treatment of a child such as
to cause severe and persistent effects on the child’s emotional development, and
may involve:
• Conveying to a child that s/he is worthless, unloved, inadequate, or valued
only insofar as s/he meets the needs of another person.
• Imposing developmentally inappropriate expectations e.g. interactions beyond
the child’s developmental capability, overprotection, limitation of exploration
and learning, preventing the child from participation in normal social
interaction
• Causing a child to feel frightened or in danger e.g. witnessing domestic
violence, seeing or hearing the ill treatment of another
3. Sexual abuse involves forcing or enticing a child to take part in sexual
actions.
4. Neglect involves the persistent failure to meet a child’s basic physical
and/or psychological needs, likely to result in the serious impairment of the
child’s health and development.
• Provide adequate food, clothing or shelter (including exclusion from home or
abandonment)
• Protect from physical and emotional harm or danger
• Meet or respond to basic emotional needs
• Ensure adequate supervision including the use of adequate care-takers
• Ensure access to appropriate medical care or treatment
• Ensure that her/his educational needs are met
• Ensure her / his opportunities for intellectual stimulation are met
5. Corporate Child Abuse children may be assaulted, diseased, or killed by
pervasive corporate drugs, junk-foods and beverages, perverted by mindless
violence in multiple modes, deployed as dead-end labor with no benefits, and
then dumped into a corporate future of debt enslavement and meaningless work.
Development sector should step forward to save the children from every kind of
brutality against them in collaboration with media institutions, doctors and
journalists. Each and every person of society can play its role to save the
children but especially primary school teachers and journalist can play their
vital role to educate the parents and society about the types of child abuse and
its impact on the growth and socialization of the children and social conscious
as well. Parent’s days should be organized in the primary schools of the
selected communities in which parents, tribal leaders and Imam Masjid should be
invited and trainers delivered their lectures to create awareness about this
serious issue.