In November 2008, after lot of research and thought process, I wrote an article about the traffic situation in Bangalore (India) with facts and statistics along with lots of solutions (old and my own) to reduce the traffic. The article was written out of concern and was intended to create awareness. I have also personally experienced the Bangalore traffic for so long. Hence I wanted to publish my article in any newspaper so that there will be wider reach to bring awareness.
http://chocosss.blogspot.com/2008/11/possible-solutions-to-bangalore-traffic.html
When I approached Bangalore Mirror newspaper about my article, the initial person who was responsible for web section of Bangalore Mirror told me 'Your article is pretty good'. He also told that he is interested in publishing my article in both web and prints sections but asked me to wait for some more time as their columns were full with Mumbai terror attacks that time.
After some long wait, when I approached again, the same person told that he has sent my article to the print section editor for review. After a week or so, when I approached the same person again, I was told that editor does not want to publish my article in print as he wants 'lighter stuff for the readers' but he can publish your article atleast in the web section. I was literally taken aback to hear that from a media person. Don't readers want to read heavy or factual stuff too? I understand that a newspaper can't publish all articles written by everyone but then even when they know and acknowledged my article to be very good and relevant to Bangalore!
After some thought, I said 'Yes' to the Bangalore mirror person to get my article published atleast in the websection. When my article appeared in the website, I could see only portion of my article (only 7 out of 15 solutions were published). Even in the 7 ideas published there, the content about the Bangalore traffic police were moderated and removed.
http://www.bangaloremirror.com/index.aspx?page=article§id=21&contentid=2009010820090108182346527258c5851§xslt=
The irony is that media is the face of the public which has to highlight the reality. I am shocked to learn that the media does not want to show the reality to the public and is interested only in commercial news which generates more profit for them. As long these sort of things goes on, there are less chances that the country's gruelling problems will get resolved soon.
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3 comments:
I agree Media plays a major role in social awareness programs but today in the busy lives no one is bothering about such good columns and good suggestions and implementing them is beyond thoughts. In fact, no one is taking enough time to go through News Papers regularly and coming to publishing such good columns in print media-generally many are attracted to inimical bulletin easily and would read those columns first and good columns, god knows when his/her eyesight goes on such articles and when those are practiced in real! I believe Print Media is giving more importance to inimical bulletin and probably misleading the youth at the same time and of course to print good coloumns, they have no space left over to print. Honestly shame on our media. Today our Media has become more of baneful bulletin and less of good. This has to be changed first.
Yes. Very true
agree with both
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