Social Media is abuzz on a statement by famous TV anchor cum journalist, Talat Hussain.
The veteran journalist thinks quite low of the bloggers and has high plans for how the social media, especially Twitter, should be used.
Talat refers to bloggers as groups who have angled themselves as journalists, while they are not. He believes that blogs are not backed by any sense of accountability and responsibility.
His complain about the social media activists is that, “they are the ones who have got blogs on us, they are the ones who have got websites on us, they are the ones who are taking the mickey out of us,“.
Talat Hussain believes using Twitter makes you dumb.
“There is too much talking and there is too much emphasis on texting and because you have to cram from Twitter to messages, a great thought into 100 words or less, it constrains you to dumb down your thinking.â€
and … “lot of dumb down talk and dumb down thinking takes place through this.”
He shares how he wants to see the social media, especially Twitter, “productive information, timely information, information that people can then deploy in their daily lives and get some result out of it, upcoming scholarships, sports news, encouraging people to go for games trials, telling farmers that flood is coming up, expanding the network of cautions with regard to law and order,”
and .. “pathway of information flow for more productive purposes then it can lead to mass change”
Apparently he wants to transform bloggers and social media activists into radio announcers. If Talat Hussain can have his say, you may use Twitter only for weather updates, posting cricket scores and telling the world what you had for breakfast. Ironically, this is what the 80% of Twitter users are currently doing. 🙂
Listen to Talat Hussain, grumbling about the Social Media, bloggers and Twitter.
One wonders who gave him the right to decide whether bloggers are journalists or not. Incidentally, majority of the bloggers do not consider themselves as journalists. Its the narrow minded approach of main stream media workers that consider every news processing element as a journalist.
Talat Hussain complains that blogs are not backed with accountability and responsibility. How much responsible journalists are? Who does their accountability? What action has been taken about the paid program done by Mehr Bokhari and Mubashir Lucman? What about journalists who take benefit from government, institutions and individuals? Are they not accountable?
The anchor persons in TV talk shows, the article writers in newspapers, the investigative reporters, routinely act as judge, jury and execution. Are they not accountable?
The journalist fraternity say they raise questions and criticize others for the sake of public. But when public raise its voice, its called idle talk and dumb down thinking. How dense.
@faizanlakhani Bloggers are not journalists. Even many journalists are not journalists. Anchor persons are not Judge, Jury and Execution.
— Kashif Aziz (@kashaziz) July 26, 2012
It is only the fear of Social Media replacing the Main Stream Media that make people like him recoil and burst out with such obtuse statements.
This is how it can be summed up:
Talat is one of the person’s of old school of thoughts. When he don’t consider Bloggers as Journalists they he will also not accept Freelance Writers as Journalists as well.
For Talat Hussain probably a Journalist is a person who has been issued an Identity Card from Employers of Print and Electronic Media and on the basis of that another Identity Card is issued by the Ministry of Information.
So this means that any one does not posses an Identity Card of Print and Electronic Media and another Identity Card of Ministry of Information is not a Journalist.Here Talat Hussain should look first the meaning of Journalist in the Dictionary to determine who can be called a Journalist.
Image: From Flickr @rcade
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