The Asia Media Forum

Communication challenges are universal.  The Asian Media is no exception to it.  There is a clear relationship between poverty and media; however, there are some things that will not be obvious immediately via media.  One can be left wondering about why everyone should be worry about the freedom of press.  Well, the role of the media is to spread the news across to everyone.   It is important for the media to be powerful enough to make the eyes of the world turn towards a specific problem.  This should happen regardless of the language of the target citizen.

Quality and Impact of the Content Matters

If the news should be known widely, it should be interesting enough. For instance, if a news media is giving out information in one particular language, if the news is going to be powerful, the end recipient will be communicating the information in a casual talk to their friends who are not recipients to the language in which the news was published.  This is powerful about media news.

The quality and impact of the content matters; while, language has a role to carry the news to the target market, if the content is strong and is conveyed in a powerful manner, the end recipient will take the news by word of mouth to the non-natives of the language too.  The non-speaker of the language who cannot understand the language by himself/herself will in turn circulate the information to their circle. News that is powerfully conveyed can do the rounds more viral than what you can imagine.

Raise Awareness and Improve Understanding

For instance, when the Asian Media is promoting news about the activities or promotional plans of the government, the news needs to be kept alive until an awareness and understanding of the scheme or plan has reached the masses.  When it comes to governmental executions, the Asian Media is just a small part in the pie diagram.  However, the media can contribute to keeping the crucial aspects of the government information alive.  The Asian Media can do a lot about publishing the content related to the failing issue.

Power Holders and Freedom of Press

There is no denial about the fact that the media will be influence by capitalist and government control.  It becomes important for the media to survive these.  Any news that Asian Media reports about will be relate in some way or the other to the respective authorities.  This means the respective authorities are going to limit the freedom of press in one way or the other.  In a diverse continent like Asia, where the region has many countries, the media is forever facing the problem of being able to balance the power of authorities.   In reality, there is a power holder in every region.   Power holders prefer to filter the information and maintain their positive image in the eyes of the public. It takes skillful press expertise to turn the eyes to the filtered matter.

Government Handling Their Citizens

Some Asian governments are kind of conservative in the way they handle their citizens.   They do not prefer to encourage their Asian Media to expose factual information about the country.  Some information is likely to be critical in nature.  The citizens do not want to risk being track by the government.  The fear of facing authority is forever prevalent with the media and the citizens of a nation.  This has happened in the past, is happening now, and will continue to happen in the future.

Political Openness

While Political topics widely discuss, we cannot be sure if it set anytime at all.  There is always a restriction of expression happening at one point in time or other. This is particularly true about discussing a few abnormal issues. In some medical situations, the government might influence the Asian media about restricting the flow of information about a fast spreading epidemic.

Telecommunication Technology

With the coming of the telecommunication technology, it has become possible for people to share important bits of messages by sending SMS to each other.  Asian media habits are slowly changing. In fact, they are evolving for good. The growth of technology is go huge and information is being published everywhere to the extent that crucial information tends to spread life forest fire, in just a few minutes.

Critical Comment over Radio in Asian Media

Critical comments are becoming very common in the radio. Public opinion is getting to become very diverse depending upon how different groups of people in the public perceive the information.

The Asian Media can choose to serve the capitalists or they can choose to serve the interests of the public.  This is the age where everything is going for sale and we cannot be sure about media singularity.  The media has no option but to put up multiple faces before they can finally get the news across either in a wise way or otherwise.

 

 

 

The history of the respective countries in the Asian region contributes in a deeper way Asian media handles information. Even for nations locate in the same geographic region, the critical issues might be facing is different from each other.  The economic parameters and the political facts also contribute to the way.  Such as how media handles press information and how they choose to convey the information.

News Censoring and Filtration is here to Stay

News censoring and filtration is here to stay no matter how genuine the Asian Media wants to be. Any media agency is dependent upon the state authority or national authority of the region in which they function from.  The media quality depends upon the person ruling the country.  When it comes to spreading information about the government activities, media would prefer to play it safe because they will obviously want to stay in business for long time.  They might prefer not to be overly critical about the government.  No region in Asia is left out of this kind of orientation in news making.

Cheap Reality Shows and Lousy Programs

There are negligible Asian Media that is not fill with cheap reality shows and several other lousy programs to generate sales revenue for businesses.  There are Asian regions where the media channel is state invest and the programs relay are too conventional, where one might feel that with the multitude of private run Asian Media channels, these state run channels are pro-government and are being run name sake. While some programs are obviously useful; the way in which the media promotes its programs, makes the usefulness sloppily accessible to the target audience.  The target audiences simply miss out on the communication.

Information That Other’s Fail to Declare about Asian Media

Well, there is the catch. With governments and capitalists dominating the Asian media different capitalists and power players in the politics start off with a media channel on their own.  This means what one person wants to hide will be reveal by the equally powerful opponent.  The news somehow spills all over.   With too many media channels coming up, at least one of them come up with information that other’s don’t declare.  Also, rare information gets spread across in the form of secret messages.  With advancement in technology and increase in communication facilities, it is hard for people to be able to hide information unless too much of work has gone in to the hiding process.

Politics and Media are Closely Connected

No amount of improvement in civil liberty will prevent authoritarian government from controlling the Asian media. To an average observer the Asian media plays an important role in helping with an understanding of the world around them.  For any society, whether it is about Asian or otherwise, the politics and media get closely connect with each other. While it is being a common trend for news media to be consistently putting pressure. Mainly on those who are acting in the political front, it takes a lot of evolution for Asian media to be able to operate freely. Since people do not interact with the politicians directly. Hence, they depend on the media for information about happenings in the politics and of course about government schemes.

Reciprocal Influence

Media influences and shapes the public opinion about politicians and the politicians influence the media.  In a way both of them influence each other in a substantial manner.  How the news is construct will depend upon the time, culture and place relate with the people and circumstances of the news.  Defending the status quo happens across all spheres.  The media wants to sustain its status quo and the power authorities like capitalists and politicians want to sustain the status quo.  An unspoken war is forever underway.

Quality of Media Practitioners

The quality of the information relayed is dependent upon the quality of the media practitioners.  Some media practitioners are conservative.  Conservative Asian Media people will not give up on their status quo at any cost.  They will want to sustain the order in the social and political sphere and they are black and white about what they publish.  In reality, they are those who check the activities of the government, and they literally dictate how improper activities are to be balance.  They stir in the required change at any point in time.  They deal with political transformation and society based crisis in the way it has to be.

With civil liberty picking up throughout the Asian Region, chances are too high for Asian Media to evolve to higher standards in authentic news making and reporting. This might not be uniform across all Asian regions.  Some regions might not show improvement at all while some regions might show really cool improvement.

The degree of freedom experienced by Asian Media is not the same throughout the different Asian Countries.  Whether it is about the print media or the broadcasting media, the freedom of press differs a great deal between the Asian nations. Some nations allow the press to freewheel partially and some allow the press to work in a way it is subservient to the government, and some play somewhere in between.  Well, there is always a threat to professional standing.

Fear of Independent Media

Politicians and authoritative bodies control the press, because they are scared of the consequence of their power, if the media is allowed to function independently.  Even Asian media require some kind of economic stability; therefore, they do not have complete freedom to work by the freedom of press.  At some point in time or the other, they will have to get through the censorship process to satisfy power players and authoritative capitalists. There is definitely mild to strong crisis in freedom of press in all Asian regions.  No Asian media can be called influence free. Power play is there everywhere.  To sustain themselves, media allow a certain degree of influence naturally; however, in some areas, the influence is too dominant.

Criticism Silencing

When the media becomes open about criticisms about government and business affairs, it is true that politicians and capitalists will want to silence the criticism.  They do the needful to silence the criticism by power play. Some governments go to the extent of revising the existing law for the press.  Some of them come up with new interpretations about how journalists will have to deal with facts.  These are all common happenings in the different regions in Asia that the Asian Media covers for.

Illusion of Support in Asian Media

Almost every kind of government will exert some kind of control or the other over the media.  This is regardless of whether they are democratic, dictators or republic.  Popularly elected leaders of every kind will influence the press side.  There have been instances where the talk show hosts were shuffled, suspended, and programs removed.  All these happened because the expressed views were unfriendly to the existing power ruling the region.

Advertising Incentives

The major revenue for the press comes from advertising revenue and the relative incentives.  The politicians well have a major control over the advertisement budgets of state operated businesses and power exertions in the businesses of capitalists who obtain favors from existing government.  Therefore, only media that is acting in favor of the government will be able to prosper. There are some Asian regions where the Asian Media is the freest despite the suffering.  They choose to be what they are despite all the suffering. Media engagement is dependent upon public power and people opinion.  They need to go through all the confusions, manipulations, and other practices of influence exerted by power bodies.

News Media – New Possibilities of Asian media

Despite influential situations, global connectivity has helped news reach the attention of people.  This is true about regional, national and international happenings.  No matter what, the control of the government continues to exist. The politicians make use of the media to broadcast and propagate their ideological messages to people.  Most of the Asian media are under the influence of the government’s thumb. When governments issue laws that are against the press, it stays there despite popular people signature movements.  In all Asian Regions politics is a powerful influence.  Despite all, the governments were not able to completely silence the journalistic practices.  The tug of war keeps continuing.

Crack Down

Media is being used as a powerful tool to attract foreign investments from other nations. The top leaders of the government are looking to crack down to the sentiments of the social groups to eventually achieve the intended purpose.  Journalistic freedom and related issues continue to be a struggle and despite all this the Asian Media functions through trials trying to make revenue yet keeping up with press justice. Journalists and media channels are trying to find a break through strategy to deal with these challenges.  They are trying to bridge the differences too.  However, when the political climate is worse and revenue does not fall in to place, the press has no option than to shut down.

Press Has Long Way to Go

There is lot that is desired and expected from the Asian media; however, they find it hard to keep up with the standard due to variable power play from political and capitalist attitudes.  Government sanctions criticisms to be discussed and they censor the criticisms to be left out.  The media will have to either serve the public or they will have to survive the power players.  There is no mid way in between.  The situation is extreme for Asian Media.  Some media that tried to serve both have left the people to make the ultimate decision. People are ultimately trick by the government.  Government wins.  Press has long way to go.

 

 

There are some reporters who are die-hard in their virtues and they are not ready to give up on what they need to be doing no matter what.  Interestingly, the news agencies in Asian Media they work for are also ready to bear up for media ethics. It is true that majority of the Asian region has the least amount of journalistic freedom. There are some Asian regions that have set the worse kind of example when it comes to freedom of press.  The governments restrict and control the Asian Media outlets in those regions.

Asian Media Reporter Quality

To understand in a clear manner about the Asian media reporter quality and the respective news agency quality we have to examine each Asian region.  While almost every Asian Region government guarantees the freedom of press in a constitutional manner, the governments in reality control and restrict the freedom of press.  In some of the Asian regions where the infrastructure for telecommunication is not fully developed, there is a strong hindrance in terms of taking the news to the people.  It takes a well-developed communication channel to make news reach possible to all facets of the society.

Power over Public Opinion

In some Asian regions where the technological and educational infrastructure is well-developed the authoritative government censors the way in which news is delivered and they convert their political power in to a power that actually shapes the way in which the public will have to perceive the surrounding scenarios and happenings.  Some governments tend to use the media rightfully to establish stability and contribute to the economic growth of the Asian Region.

Decline in Journalistic freedom

There are some Asian regions where despite a well-established telecommunication system and civil literacy, the freedom for journalists is near zero.  Repeated attacks on journalists are not uncommon in these areas.  However, in some cases, the government would not censor the happenings by exerting its power on the media by preventing them from publishing attacks on journalists.  In some areas, it is freedom of press, in some areas it is restrict, in some areas it is not so free types.  There are too many variables dictating the status of Asian media in different Asian regions. Each area should be explore and study individually in a customize manner for authentic facts.

Positive Development

There are some Asian regions where the Asian Media is able to enjoy freedom of press.   Some states that were restrictive around a decade ago are the Asian regions with utmost positive development.  There are several newspapers that own and operate by civilians who are not authoritative political practitioners establish media outlets.  Even if they start off as fully free, they eventually become partially free.

The other problems that impact the Asian Media are low salaries and respect in terms of hierarchical positions occupied by editors and owners of press.  Any news that threatens national security will obviously be restrict by the authoritative government.  International reputation for a nation is create and destroy by the quality of media news. Therefore, any nation would obviously restrict and have control over the information transmitted to sustain its positive image.  Every administrative body will want to prevent defamation issues associated with the news.

Agents of Change

Regardless, there are some situations where there is a people movement happening. There is a mass outburst of unhappiness with the overall governance, where people choose to march against the government and they prefer to call it enough is enough.  They choose to work as a movement against the government. When this happens the media adds up to the awakening and they publish authentic information acting as agents of change.  Well, this might not last for too long, but when the negativities of governance are more than manageable and beyond ethical practices, people burst out and at this point, the Asian media enjoys its glorious period by being able to express maximum of freedom of press. When power regains, then censoring or information resumes to 100% or to a partial extent.

Moderate Behavior of Press

With encouraging global trends, Asian media is evolving to keep political situations and social happenings. It is under control by showing moderate behavior on important news in the media either by press, news paper, TV news, internet, or through smart phones.  This keeps the people informed about happenings. And, people react to the news.  When mass opinion propagate in a way to oppose unethical practices. There certain amount of control seen in overall behavior of politicians, capitalists and other influential agents in the society.  Every influential personality who works with vested interest want a mass outburst as it will in turn affect the target. Therefore, despite all negativeness and power struggles, Asian Media is influential during different periods of time.