We saw the era of the “9 pm bulletin” when the majority of the population used to sit in front of the TV at 9 pm daily to watch the news, as that was the only source of information at that time. We also saw the era of the “evening news paper- aaya awam aaya, qoumi aaya” when all the eye catching images and news were part of the evening news papers sold on the traffic lights. And then we saw and even currently seeing the era of the breaking news culture, when 16 hours from 24 the screens of the TV channels remain red, they are running in a race of providing more and more sensation to our people and getting the ratings.
And now the most popular, the era of social media, the facebook and watsapp applications used by most of our urban and to some extent rural population as well. These two applications are used by young and adults, literate and non literate, chief executive to office boy, grandparents and the list goes on.
I have chosen to highlight a very major issue which is the sharing and believing of anything that can be photo shopped. I have come across so many posts and people keep asking, did you see that , how can someone say like this, it can only happen in Pakistan etc etc. People without thinking and realizing that it may not be true share it massively. We don’t realize this can hurt someone, this can lose someone’ earning, this can even lead to someone being fired from the job or thrown out of the family, most importantly someone’s image.
These posts may be true but we should have some sense of responsibility before sharing. Only if ask few questions from ourselves, is this really true? Does it have any small proof of what is being talked about? Sharing of this might hurt someone, did I see it myself etc.
This paragraph was not intended to my part of the article but while searching the images I found some really heart breaking images of the massacres being done on mass scale, I felt so bad looking at those images and decided that we will refrain from those as there might be some truth in them as well. Therefore we will mainly talk about the images which are least controversial in terms of religious beliefs.
Below are few images that might be true but we need to see may be its wrong and done just to destroy someone’s reputation or image.
Look at this worm in KFC sandwich.
How the hell it is proved that the worm was inside when the sandwich was purchased
The ratio of the shoe is not appropriate and it clearly shows that is photo shopped but many people shared this image. we kept sharing and discussing
In this page people have written that the fungus was inside the nestle juice but how do we know if it was inside or was put in the glass later. This might be a conspiracy to shatter the sales of nestle
Lizard in some noodles being cooked, how do we know that the noodles show in the picture is maggi. In the second image how do we know that the condition of the person lying in the hospital is because of eating maggi or even the noodles shown in the image
I started writing this article few days ago and now days we have huge media coverage on the Axact issue. People are saying whatever they want against them without realizing if its true or not. May be because of this irresponsible attitude the organization can suffer badly , that means almost 5000 people can lose jobs. On an average if one people supports his 4 member family then 20,000 households will be affected. This is only about the direct employees, there are so many suppliers, service providers etc that will be affected by this. I plan to write a separate article in detail on this specific controversy.
However the message that I wanted to deliver through this article is to realize that we should be responsible in making judgments without any proper proofs. This can hurt someone’s business, life and relationship, therefore think before you share anything which can be harmful for others.
The writer can be contacted on sheerazadil@gmail.com
