• January 30, 2014
• Media Ethics
• Web Desk

When was the last time we saw breaking news on our television channels? Well, we do not have any idea about that because these days every news story has become ‘breaking news’. The concept of breaking news came with the privatization of various channels in Pakistan. I remember that when it was only one channel; the breaking news would fall upon us like a catastrophe and our hearts went out to the victims of those disasters such as floods, earthquakes, and air crashes but now Musharraf’s angiography has also become breaking news!

Private TV channels have made everything a breaking news which is similar to calling ‘sheer aya’ which loses its impact by repeating or showing nonsense. Let us discuss the other media services provided in other parts of the world. None of them go insane on television channels like our media does. Entitling each news as breaking news should not be the only way to grab the viewers’ attention. We must know that we have some rules for every kind of news that the media publishes. I must say that PEMRA should be doing a better job when they have so many channels to monitor. Kindly set some rules so that all of us can differentiate between ‘breaking news’ and other types of news. The authorities have to revise their rules and regulation in order to have a proper media.

RIDAH ZAFAR,
Rawalpindi,

The Nation