MEDIA FOR THE It seems like an age ago when the burgeoning
reach of the Pakistani media seemed like a
PEOPLE: HEARING
IMPAIRED
I f y o u c a n r e a d t h i s t e x t , you are
one of those 99.6% lucky peoples who are
neither blind nor deaf. You can enjoy the
beauty of nature, your life, your relationships,
and the most important part, your
communication with the rest of the
world. As you are living in the age of quick
communication and information explosion,
you must be thankful that you are blessed
with your beautiful EYES that makes your
vision and helps you to respond
accordingly, your listening power that plays a
big role in your communication, making you
update with the responses around.
We get the best to our moods and
needs with switching a large
variety of channels.
ln the population of 167 million Pakistanis
(https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-
world-factbook/geos/pk.html July 2008 est.),
there are people like us who regularly interact
with the media. We wake up every morning
with a tea and newspaper or a news headline
on television, in daytime get updates on an
important news that is sensed, for
ensuring safety for our family at home and for
our security to reach back home from the
office or university. After a hard day in the
evening, we entertain ourselves via television
prime time shows with the beloved family
and gatherings. Even on weekends when we
really want to sit back and relax in our leisure,
special shows and programs help us to do so.
Every body wants to be updated in relation to
his knowledge. So it is the medium that helps
keep us informed and updated every moment,
with the latest and breaking news about the
world and people around us making us
manage our lifestyle and survival in
accordance to it. Even at times of depression,
we try to overcome it through entertainment.
Some of us have also participated in
discussions, where we contributed our views
and vision on certain issues. In fact we get the
best to our moods and needs with switching a
large variety of channels.
distant dream; but now, with access to more
TV channels and Radio channels than you can
shake your remote at; it has become an
obvious reality. It is within this reality, that
the Pakistani media has begun to find its feet
and evolve itself into a position of further
strength by looking to eventually gain the
ability to be trusted in terms of the
information that it internally communicate to
us, and to also be able to externally brand
Pakistan.
The media ever noticed?
That there are more than 3.5
Million Pakistanis are disabled,
0.3 million blinds, 0.25 million
deaf..??
In this fast developing world where there are
people like us who are enjoying and making
their best to survive happily, there exist some
number of people who are DISABLED,
cannot communicate their ideas but can
THINK with excellence, sometimes even
better then us. As it’s my view that if they are
provided with perfect tools that make them
understand the world around them, and asked
to manipulate and express their ideas, they
can definitely come up with as natural and
innovative ideas as we are or may be
even BETTER than us.
It is vital though, that the media remembers
that it must not simply ‘grow’. It is
fundamental to have a responsible media, and
then the onus comes on the very barons that
run the media to ensure that their
responsibility is carried out to the fullest.
Where they benefit young and old, literate
and low educated or illiterate, they are
expanding the target viewers reaching and
focusing on every community and people. One
community that is being forsaken is special
people. And the most effecting from the tunnel
vision of the media are the hearing impaired.
It is the matter of fact that they can also read
a newspaper or the headline that appears 24
hours on a news channels. But is it not what
they are limited to by us? What if they ask for
their right to be treated equally for
entertainment side, information side, and
education side of television channels? The
television media is equally important for them
as well. We, rather than asking them to get
alternate options and wait for newspaper till
next morning for the today's news, cannot
have a single channel for them??? Or we
think that THEY DON'T NEED MEDIA?
They also come across multiple situations,
they also want to move forward with us and
be updated, but are we providing them with
solutions to their needs? In fact their needs
are somehow more than us. In order to
support their deficiency, they rely more on
other senses to communicate with the world
around.
It is not just the matter of realization for
media concerns, but it is the matter of concern
to the people like us who can bring CHANGE.
Like Shehzad Roy who says "NO
DIFFERENCES CAN MAKE A find quality programming, open your eyes and
DIFFERENCE". Let’s just imagine yourself
a deaf for a moment. You are in a world where
you cannot hear what’s going on around you;
you can just make a raw idea or sense that
this may be the situation. There is no one to
entertain you or to update you. You can watch
television but cannot listen that what is being
communicated. Can you imagine a life like
this??? How difficult for you to survive in the
world where you just rely on lip reading and
hand movements of others to be able to
communicate, although you have to
understand that message what is not made for
you, not in accordance to your deficiency but
it is essential for you to understand it.
Imagine a world where you can not even
understand what the president of your
country is saying when he addresses the
nation. Quite simply imagine a world which
does not accept you as part of itself, simply
because it refuses to communicate with you.
This is where the responsibility of the media
comes in, to create awareness and acceptance
for these communities, and to show them that
they are an important part of the country and
that they are just as much patriotic as you or I
are.
What have we provided??
I remember once upon a time there used to be
a show on PTV called "BOLTAY HATH" in
which sign language is used to communicate
with hearing impaired, but now you would be
hardly find something like this that the
hearing impaired finds for them and can
communicated for them.
An end responsible note: What
we have to realize?
The key thing is to understand that these
individuals can play important roles in
shaping the future of our country: a future of
acceptance and understanding. This
understanding needs to be clear to the media
firstly, and then it needs to seep to the society
through the media. This message is for the
many channels that are often struggling to
see what riches our country has.
The Media has to be FOR the
people
A hope, that this responsibility will be
realized by every citizen of our country. The
media will realize their negligence and accept
their responsibility to provide equal
importance to these 0.25 millions of
Pakistanis. And the citizen will join hands
with disabled and allow them to move
forward with us.
(Written by Arif Altaf Rajani, CBM ID:2008-3-
06-8414)
A Comment by a reader:
“They have also right to get updated with the
current situation of country and other things,
whenever any thing happens, all the channels,
radio stations, newspapers publishes and
releases it as early as possible, but do the media
persons thinks that how can we make the
disable people update or make them aware with
the situation? We should make a Change”