Saad Maqbool 1911299 (BBA 2B)

“The role of media in politics”

Media is the foremost way of communication now days that expedite the information of almost
all the sectors and considers as the vital source of broadcasting and exchange of political
contents. Traditional media emphasized on news and print media for collaboration and
interaction. Media is evolving rapidly over past few years and serving as wide range of
implications in democratic governance and political practices. Modern media including social
media engages to keep the public aware about the ways of election contests and the citizens and
politicians performs their duties in politics. Modern media is transformed as political media to
redefine the role of journalists to perform their duties according to the policies of elections and
also improves the ways in which government institutions are operated by the political leaders and
also provide the information about the new policies that are made by the politicians to run
different organization. The relationship between the politics and media is symbiotic as the media
incorporates with politics and reports the new strategies. Modern media basically helps the
public in making sympathetic decisions about the leaderships and helps them to check the
agenda’s that are made for their benefits. Media also helps the public to engage directly by
voting, contacting their leaders and politicians and also makes them the part of various press
conferences.

As media is the form of technology whether it is printing media or electronic media, it has some
negative aspects too. This is the biggest dilemma, but it does exist that the media has
tremendously increasing influence day by day in politics which should not be as it’s not their
designated domain. Media now organize the campaigns of their favorite candidates in any
elections which are not supposed to happen.

In the recent past years few leaks were made by media and many politicians of the world were
called culprits and were forcefully resigned. These leaks had impacted our Pakistani political
structure as well and caused a lot of instability. The first leak was named as wiki leaks and the
other one was panama leaks. Both leaks contained so much information which was confidential
and private, may be also called inappropriate because of some aspects. Many politicians got their
careers ruined and ended up in jail. Who was behind all these things which caused damage to the
reputations of political leaders? There was no intelligence agency neither the participation of
political activities, but initially it was circulated in an international media and then in Pakistani
media as well.

Many talk shows that are aired by different news channels can be proved effective or helpful for
the citizen of any state but on the other side it may cause a worst effect on the politicians. It’s
when any political leader is sitting in any live talk show on a television they definitely take a
break and during that break if there is any call or any off the record conversation of that
particular politician, they record that and use that against that politician when needed. Few folks
in media houses are only designated to get the information of many political leaders about their
personal lives which is totally a brutal and unethical attack, but who cares sometimes media just
want to increase the ratings of their shows for that they can put anything at stalk if they want to.

Mostly mass media is considered as anti-democratic because some people believe that the media
channels or newspapers are competing for the audience and try to make the news more attractive
by manipulating the politics and present it as entertainment rather than the serious business it is.

Many of the people also believe that the media is being biased about candidates and mostly
presents whatever they want to present. The mass media has some positive aspects as well
because it helps the people to be aware about the past and present events and helps them to make
their own decisions for future selection of candidates that may run government.