The Agents of Pessimism in the State of Control

The wave of intolerance that has taken over the country is a definitive product of the fake news culture. This way of thinking is further pushed forward by the representatives and informers of the public that we in layman’s terms call the journalists. This indeed has led to the decrease of the potentials of positive journalism and its effects on the masses.

I have a confession to make to my readers; it is that I have a rather pessimistic approach to life. I look at the glass as half empty with just a few gulps of water left. In fact the seasons depress me. They are a constant reminder of how things end after robbing you of either the warmth of the sun, the sweet cold of winter or the crippling leaves. This pessimism of mine doesn’t only come from the fact that half my genes are highly and actively negative but it also is boosted by my place of birth and I give credit where credit is due.
There is a way pessimism is spread. It is more like a spirit that you pour all over and then light a small matchstick to put everything to fire. If you ask us, the agents of pessimism, we’ll tell you that we have embedded ourselves in this society just like the spirit gets soaked up in objects and all we ever need to flame up is a tiny little spark. Thanks to our country and its secret allegiance to this school of thought, it has provided many matchsticks to help spread the order, further into the nooks and corners of the society where people still have the ability to raise the flags of peace and happiness. The biggest agents that we have amongst us are not the ministers who go up on the podium to spread the word of selective positivity, no. but in actuality are the fierce, bold and loud men and women you see on your television screens every evening after a tiring day of work. Their coarse voice plays a soothing tune in your head, while their pointy gestures virtually massage the tense tendons of your body and slowly when you fall asleep on your couch, their speeches about hate and regress crawls up in your subconscious mind and takes over the whole system. These are the top tier journalists, the want to be top tiers and the straight up copy cats. The biggest factor to pushing people towards pessimism is concealing the truth from them and this job that is being well done by the journalists of our country, actually if you think about it, this is the only job they are doing.

Our society/state has created a profession that not only spreads negativity but aims to tackle the leftover effects of positivity by covering up any marks of it. These agents get to play an off putting story, create fraudulent news or sensationalize feelings of hate and remorse to keep people from seeing the truth. Now my dear readers, when we are talking about the truth here we refer to the propaganda that is being spread through the passage of pessimism. In this country, journalism which was supposed to be a remarkable profession of truth and virtue has resorted to the fundaments of “Safforinised Yellow journalism”. Every news channel aims to woo the viewers who have already fallen through the rabbit hole of negativity. Instead of helping them take their blind folds off, these journalists further darken their visions by creating a series of news that diverts the viewers attention from real issues for example even after over 100 days of communication blackout in Kashmir, no news media did any form of coverage for this crucial piece, instead chose to air the false stories of “normalcy returning to the streets of the valley”. In fact some of the rebellious journalists, who wanted to represent the realities of the state, were barred from even visiting the place. This proves the importance of censorship in spreading this idea, where people believe that bad things must have the upper hand, and good is more than often neglected.

Journalists have a huge influence, when it comes to selling an idea to the people of a country. These are the representatives of the reality. So when the reality is altered in such a manner that it only benefits a singular part of a diverse society, the whole scheme becomes toxic. If we switch our televisions on right now, we’ll most definitely find at least three journalists trying to sell propaganda and cheating the news by presenting an irrelevant story about things that hardly matter. The contemporary journalists have become so self-centered that they wish to create an image of themselves that fits in with the popular nationalist-hardcore-puppet of the government criteria. People are afraid of going against the pessimistic approach of the country. Where journalists, who were rather great orators like Arnab Goswami or impeccable presenters like Sweta Singh, have given themselves over wholly to the state, could’ve helped in pulling the majority out of the pits of pessimism. But unfortunately like all things, they too went to waste. Due to this phenomenon of selling what will sell the best instead what would be a better thing to do, the journalism of India has lost its legitimacy. It has become an entertainment industry that runs on the orders of a state. A democracy that should separate the media from the state has therefore transformed itself into a government that merged both of the things so roughly, that neither of the institutions can be trusted anymore. It became the biggest factor in creating a negative air that surrounds our country now and my dear sorry readers; I feel that all of us slowly are breathing the same thing that intoxicates our knowledge, approach and ideas. Oh all I can say is that I hope that God saves us all but first detaches the whip of control from the skin of the journalists where they’ll be free and help us free ourselves from the quicksand of pessimism that is devouring our country.

Babra Shafiqi
Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia