Blame the media?

(All photos courtesy of google.co.ke)

Ever since 2013, the world has been taking a spiral downfall to an abyss of where children as young as 12 to 13 years of age are drinking alcohol, men are becoming useless and full time drinkers of alcohol, girls are growing up wanting to be socialites, racism is still prevalent, terrorism, social media vices, and general pollution of morals and values. This is according to my opinion and experiences. To me, this generation is lost and we need a revolution to wake us up.

In my home country looks to me as the worst hit. We are all fighting illegal and second generation alcohol, and yet on Monday night clubs are open in Nairobi and people are drinking till the next Monday. Promotions and events are being held by alcoholic making companies and nobody is asking how they affect us. An event was cancelled because there was no alcoholic drink. I believe if we were to look at the budgets of people, almost 60 percent is going to alcohol, which could be used to build the nation.

I know I spoke of ills and evils we are facing in another blog post, but I want to dive in to the fact that the answer I gave and people give is the media is corrupting our morals.

The media’s purpose is to educate, entertain and inform. I had one of classes cancelled because we were arguing is this is really the case. There are a lot of fabricated and suggestive stories in our news media. To make it worse even the forms of media that were seen as authoritative and truthful have taken a nose dive and are now hiring people who can write the most scandalous and juicy stories that will have #KOT sparked up for weeks. It has become more about sales than objectivity.

One of the students in our class defended the media by saying “we get what we ask for.”

When the story about the 13 year old children caught drinking and doing other things arose, people went viral by blaming everything on the media. Media are the ones spoiling and degrading children’s morals.

One question was never answered, ‘Where are the parents when the children are watching trash on the television?’ Traditionally parents had the power of the remote and dictated what is to be watched. The parent control button is also there. So why are parents today not taking responsibility?

If you allow your children to watch our esteemed socialites, as they jiggle their behinds and get money from rich individuals, then why should you blame the media?

Worse still is that if something ‘naughty’ comes on television, the parents sit down and watch with their kids without telling them the impact and repercussions of such acts. Condoms are being advertised when children are still awake and nobody complains.

Twerk videos have become the new trend and no parent bothers themselves to be concerned until they see their own child blowing up twitter and trying to ‘Break the internet.’ I feel very disturbed when opening You Tube and the first videos I am hit with is ‘Kenyan school girls twerking’. I ask myself, what if it were my child in that video and the whole of Kenya has watched her? What if we walk on the streets and every guy keeps smiling and waving, or trying to spank her in front of me? Will I blame her or me?

In my six years of tertiary education, I have been meant to believe that media is a business of making money. Whatever they produce they want to sell and they can only sell what people want to watch.

Today they are so many gutter press sites and blogs online. They spread rumors and tell the wackiest stories ever. They also show twerk videos and ‘leaked sex tapes’. They are making good money and giving mainstream media a run for their content. Digital migration and easy access of the internet has boosted these sites and given a revolution to how media is portrayed. Thanks to the thousands of likes and views they are bold enough to call themselves authoritative ‘news sources’. But can you blame them? They have readers and followers across all platforms. Isn’t that what is most important? Have a huge audience?

I am sure there are some media producers who look at what is going on and thinking why am I doing this? This does not conform to my beliefs and will not help my fellow men. It becomes difficult if the media house is not your own, because you have to make money. If it is yours, it falls because nobody wants the truth or positive content. They want to be fed lies and explicit content.

If we continue blaming the media we will not make any head way. If we blame our parents for lack of control it will be useless. If we blame society, we will never find a solution. If we blame ourselves, we will never progress. If we all work together and there is no difference we are not working together. We need to trust each other and work together. We should not look at the economic aspects rather the social and aesthetics aspects.

If we feed ourselves positive things, we will have a very positive lifestyle. If ask for uplifting and upgrading content we will not only uplift ourselves, but also our society, our nation and our world.

Some might say this is media gagging, because media should be allowed to say what they want to say. But if we tell them what we want them to say, they will have to say it, because who will buy their content if we do not want it?