The Media Should Be A Tool Of Nation Building

The Media Should Be A Tool Of Nation Building.

The media plays a huge part in nation building; in actual fact the media educates the public more than the institutions of education and training do. This means that the media has the power to create a prototype of a desired society and design its environment by just shaping the minds of its audiences. The reason why the media is more influential in educating the society is because it delivers its content in a way that interests the audience, in a entertaining way, it is also because media devices are affordable and so they are in every home. Most people in our communities spend more time at home than anywhere else, those who are not home are mostly accessing media content through smartphones and portable radios. This means that, in today’s world, the media is everywhere where people are, making its influence ever strong.

But we have to pause and ask ourselves, what type of education is this media feeding our society?, in other words, what type  of a society is the media creating? There are of course many answers to this question, more especially if we were to pose this question to the entire world, but in this instance I want us to pose this question in the context of South Africa. What kind of a society is the South African media influencing?. Lets look at the mentality of most South Africans who live in areas where media content is accessible. Many young people in SA have become ignorant in such that they are not interested in issues regarding the Governance of South Africa, they never care much about the budget speech more than they care about which party will be hosted where the next month or in getting a update on what their favorite celebrity is up to. Such mentality is one that is propagated by the influential media houses of South Africa. Let us look at the programming in one of the most popular channels of the South African Broadcasting Corporation, SABC 1.  SABC throughout the whole week plays shows that are all about unrealistic lifestyles, crime, un-educational entertainment that promotes alcohol and substance abuse, shows that showcase unhealthy relationship and sexual content that does not hold up to our cultural morals. This shows are aired at pick hours where everyone is home and not busy with other activities. Educational programs on the other hand are only aired during those hours where majority of people are at work or at school.

The SABC was built by the apartheid government initially for the Afrikaner, then later on it created channels for the natives(black people) and one if not only of those channels was a channel that we today know as SABC one, its initial intent was to feed the black majority entertainment that will only keep them where they are in the status quo and dumb down their intellectual capacity. The apartheid government at the instruction of Hertzog  went on to create Newspapers that were aimed at spreading propaganda about the black majority to its white constituency.  They, through using the media, created a black population that wanted to consume content that was ill for their health, as long as it was entertaining and harboring gossip. It is because of Hertzog’s work that today we have a newspaper that is full of gossip being the number one selling newspaper in South Africa consumed mostly by the black majority, The Daily Sun.

 SABC 1 after South Africa obtained its Democracy started to craft and air a popular youth show then that was known as Yizo-Yizo. Yizo-Yizo had no educational content, it showed a youth that was into drugs, participated in ill-behavior and was very distractive in school. As I said, yizo-yizo was popular among the young people of South Africa and such led to many of its audiences mimicking the behavior of its characters in their communities and school. Yizo-yizo’s influence caused a huge mull-faction of South African schools, schools became places for violence and substance abuse. Subsequently, young people also became violent in their own communities, alcohol and substance abuse grew and so did social ills such as domestic violence.

With all this, we can conclude that the South African media does harm to our society than good, it feeds our population wrong education and create a dysfunctional society. I have to state that not all media houses, but most influential ones.  Sometimes the public is miss-educated on certain issues concerning the state and its governance, the opinions of a certain group of people will be publicized more than any other groups opinion so to make people believe that the opinions of the group are much more legitimate more than the opinions of other groups. This further extends to a censorship of certain information that the public should know on no grounds concerning the public.

We need a media that prioritizes nation building, a media that has the best interests of its audience at heart. That is the media that will help the people become a better factional society with skills and opportunities that they can access. The media that will help the society and its people stay healthy at all material times and less engage its-self in risky-behaviors. We need a media that will make the society more conscious and more aware of its democratic rights and have a full understanding of the constitution that governs it. For all this to be a reality, the media must have at-least the following programming at the right time:

•       Shows that showcase talents and skills so as to expose those who have them and also to teach and inspire those who have not decided to explore their talents or gain a skill.
•     Programs that informs the masses about available opportunities from both the public and private sector.
•  Give non-bias news reporting and open criticism sourced from all different levels of society, not only from the middle class.
• Educational programs that educates the masses about issues concerning health, subject related information, the constitution, government and its bodies and teach them their constitutional responsibility of holding the government into account.

This is just a list of the few things the media should do to play its role in nation building, but the priority should be to air these type of programs at the right time of the day where millions of people will be able to consume them. This is the media we should have in this country where the majority cannot access education because of high rates of unemployment and low wages. Media devices are becoming cheaper and portable and the majority are at least gaining access to them, so let us then educate them on what they have, change their lives and in just the near future, they will afford maybe the formal education they cannot afford now because we will have changed their lives through the media we will have delivered on the media devices they can afford.

Baanetse Machona