Picking n choosing

In the increasing competitiveness and with social media being very active, there is one danger that is flying all around us, i.e., ‘misinformation’.

Our media is picking, in their hurry to be the first to ‘Break the news’, selective words from a speech, statement of a politician, celebrity etc., and going to town with that selective message. This message gets in turn picked up by the social media and there comes the whole world of opinions, views, innuendos and abuses.

Let us look at the context of ‘Toilets before temples’ statement by Narendra Modi, I cannot understand what is wrong in saying in the 21^st century our women are still forced to faecate in the open and our men do it brazenly, all this for want of proper toilets.

Now, we have statement from leaders condemning, NaMo’s statement, how can he equate toilets to temples, someone saying, now, why don’t you criticise him because you criticized me when I spoke about toilets. What is the context in which this statement was made, who the audience were, listening to the speech, how relevant was this message to that particular audience, no one is bothered about all these material facts. Either you abuse or praise based on which bank of the river you are seated on the selective information that has been flashed in front of them.

Today unfortunately media has its own agenda, and are sometimes found pushing their agenda at any cost. This is the biggest problem we as people are confronted with. When information is provided in a twisted manner, you will read n understand the message as conveniently presented to us. This can result in dangerous outcomes.

We as people also are actually not bothered about the facts; we simply do not care whether what we read is true or can be a propaganda thrown at us. Let us look at the forwarded messages/ mails. Some of these will say, if you like/share a picture, some organization will pay money to the unfortunate kid/person in that picture, do we even give a second’s thought, how come this message is not actually coming from the owners of the site, instead coming as a forward/shared message. Particularly funny

when we have friends forwarding a message in popular chat app in smart phones, which says, if you forward this to 10/20 of your friends you will not be charged/account will be retained etc, lo I have sent it, now my account is secure. Sometimes I ask such senders, did they get the promised benefit, reply is always in the negative. This is also used in a big way in creating the fear of god, such messages do not get forwarded/shared by me, and here I am still breathing, in fact writing this piece.

It is important in this age of high speed social networking, one spends couple of minutes to actually verify the news before hitting the forward/share buttons.

Our politicians whenever they are put in a spot by a media person, first thing they do is pick up an issue related to the other party and divert the subject and there goes the entire debate for a six, unless the moderator is a smart guy, we do see the moderators too getting carried away. This is when those statements which have been used in specific context, will be conveniently misused.

(Copyright of pictures used is with the respective owners)