Friday, March 29, 2024 | Ramadan 18, 1445 H
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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Why news continues to dominate our lives

Saleh-Al-Shaibani
Saleh-Al-Shaibani
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I was in a social gathering when an old man, well in his nineties, asked me what kind of work I did. When I told him I was a journalist, his hand stopped midway over a plate of dates, lowered it on the table and then rubbed his chin thoughtfully.


He picked up a steaming cup of coffee, placed on his lips then decided not to take a sip. Instead, he asked, “Are you writing for newspapers?”


I said “yes” and wondered if I disappointed him to hear what I do for a living. He then went to tell me that the only use he had for newspapers was for wrapping food. Couldn’t he read? I asked him.


He turned to look at me and now I detected a hurt look on his weather-beaten features. Yes, he could read, he said, and as a matter of fact, he used to be a court clerk 45 years ago.


“I used to write summons and record cases,” he proudly told me. “I had to be very accurate because the information I recorded with my pen was used by the judge in his rulings.”


There were no machines in those days, he said, and certainly no newspapers to report cases. The judge’s decisions were reported by word of mouth in the local souqs.


“I was quite in demand,” he said, giving me a toothy smile as he said so. “Everybody knew that I recorded cases. People would gather around me and asked me questions even before the ruling was announced ­- to get ‘inside’ information.”


Forty-five years ago, I thought later, information was in great demand in the world. But global news networks and Press agencies threaten us with information overload now. The West pioneered global news as early as 1914 and by 1950, the average developed country was selling about 300 newspapers for every thousand people.


As years roll on, we will experience the full brunt of the New Media Order falling on us. It is not the content of the news but the amount of reports that are forced upon us that will cause the overload.


The next decade, in my opinion, will see the gradual demise of serious reports to be replaced by gossip and dramatic news that have little journalistic value.


The Internet is perhaps the greatest tool of information of all times but is being used perversely and in a very pervasive way. It is dominating the news of wars and violence like we read now about what is happening in Yemen, Syria and Iraq.


You don’t anymore need to pick a newspaper to know about that. Mind you, news still dominates our lives and the work of journalists are still read but the medium has changed. People now prefer drama and use the news not to be informed but sometimes as a tool of entertainment.


In-depth reporting and analysis is fast becoming a skill of the past and whatever remains of it is a pale shadow of its former self. Modern science and satellites now load us with news coverage with no questions asked about its authenticity or origin.


Suddenly, we have gone from scarcity of information to an overload mode from the days of a simple court clerk who relayed news in the souqs to cyberspace that opens up at the click of a mouse.


Is abundance of information an important part of human development? It can be if we keep our options open instead of digging our noses into every bit of news that comes along. Sometimes it is hard to object to the use of newspapers to wrap food like the court clerk of the past years used to do.


Saleh Al Shaibany


saleh_shaibany@yahoo.com


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