The Role of Newspapers in Modern Age
 

[B][I][U]The Role of Newspapers in Modern Age[/U][/I][/B]

The world today is much smaller than what it originally was, thanks largely due to the development of communication methods and skills. The history of mankind proves that every event has its relevance and significance with respect to the time in which it has occurred. And these communication skills have the unique distinction of contributing so much to the development of society that no other single sphere of human activity can boast of the same. Newspapers form the major means of vehicle of these communication systems which have helped the society change for better, over the years.

The society during the course of its evolution all over the world has involved people in large numbers irrespective of their proximity to the centre of events. The people at the same time could actively participate and bring about the changes in society and thereby in their life styles by responding to the events in proper time. This is largely attributable to the credit of media especially the newspapers since they are effective, economically viable and readily available to the large section of people. The mankind has a unique want of responding to the hardships of their breather, crossing the national, linguistic, ethnic and socio-economic barriers in times of crises and calamities. The newspapers have always played a significant role in arousing the awareness amongst the people to such necessities. In a democratic set up where freedom of speech is a vanguard of parliamentary institutions, the newspapers have almost single handedly defended the rights of the citizens when the same were threatened and the events have shown that the newspapers were instrumental in bringing the downfall of governments who have systematically defied the democratic institutions. The newspapers act as watch-dog of the government administration and officials ever on the vigil for malpractices, corruption, lethargy and indolence on the part of the government services. No other period of human history as the present one has seen the importance of the role played by newspapers. The unification efforts of some countries, the exposure of corrupt leaders of some regimes, the downfall of some governments, the sufferings caused by natural calamities like earthquakes, the pangs of separation caused by terrorist activities and the horrifying malaise of famine in some other parts of the world are but a few example of events of every day nature that were instantaneously brought to the millions of readership all over the world, evoking response, arousing sympathy and paving way for emotional upheavals. The newspapers thus are the only means of touching the hearts of mankind which is otherwise miles apart and has no palpable impact on developments occurring in other parts of the globe. The newspapers bring the world that much closer wherein one society responds to the needs of another, one country sympathizes with the requirements of another thereby cultivating and installing a sense of belonging in the process, quite imperceptibly though.

The newspapers have another unique distinction of having seen the times good, bad and turbulent, as the history unfolded past them. They have seen countries under slavery, win freedom, developed in all spheres of society and became powerful developing countries in the present day society. No other innovative cataloguing of human history can be paralleled to such a systematic and continuous logging of events. This is how the newspapers act as conduit for a meaningful continuity of human behavior in all respects from one generation to another. The present day newspapers educate the readership of developments in a gamut of field's viz., Science, Engineering. They also act as intermediaries for social activities like matrimonial, personal advertisements etc., thereby becoming an indispensable part of human life. The amount of readership in any society is invariably taken as a yardstick to the awareness of those citizens of the developments taking place around them.

The absence of such an umbilical cord to the society is like producing an ultra modem limousine without incorporating the brake system. It will affect the human sensitivity to the sufferings of their fellow humans. The absence of newspapers will be catastrophically to the survival of fairness in public life and half the society would not know of the developments in the other's half. It will lead to ignorance of events occurring in one region to the other, the relevance of all modern developments in Science and Technology would be futile simply because they cannot reach the large sections of the people effectively. Lastly it amounts to lack of service on on-line encyclopedia of human history and doing away with a faithful witness of ail events of human activity.

A life without newspapers is hence a life frightfully unimaginable and incredibly hard in the sense it takes the life styles of mankind to the pre medieval times, reducing life to a mere existence.
However, in the new age of electronic media, the newspapers have lost significance to people interested only in news and sports. Yet for avid readers of newspapers, these are as important as morning cup of tea or their milk.