Freedom unlimited

The media of any country hold the responsibility of creating awareness amongst the masses and, more importantly, of discerning the facts from exaggeration. Since the birth of our nation, we have been pelted with media protests about the lack of freedom of the Press.
It seems that the freedom, that was much screamed for, has now been undertaken in full swing.
The media, especially the electronic media, appears to be quite untrained about how much freedom it can exercise. This surge of over-zealous display and reporting of events perhaps was triggered by the colossal earthquake that hit the country last October. The entire battalion of TV channels came forth with full ammunition to bombard the masses with the impact that the destructive earthquake rendered to the northern part of our country. Their initiative is admirable but, perhaps, that is the time when they lost sight of the fine line between the reportage of facts, creating awareness, and exploiting public emotions for the benefit of the channel.
The recent carnage of Nishtar Park was also exploited in its worse possible way. There is no denying the fact that the incident was itself an abhorrent one and became the cause for dark clouds of mourning. The perturbing element arises when the same was actually commercialised under the garb of reporting by the media. Telecasting live from the site of the bomb blast and showing scattered limbs, bloody scenes and pieces of human flesh over and over again is horrific and a reflection of absolute callousness. The reporting of Nishtar Park carnage was followed by the burial procession of the victims and the channels even went into the horrific details of showing the bodies being buried inside the grave.
The fatal accident of a television programme producer, was perhaps the height of insensitivity, when one of the reporting channels went overboard by asking a child of about five years of the deceased, who was oblivious of the tragedy that had hit him, about the whereabouts of his father! The child innocently replied, "He is out and expected back soon". Why does the channel have to resort to such shallow reporting tactics to grab attention? The idea and concept behind reporting facts does not license exploiting of public emotions and sentiments. There should be restrictive measures taken by PEMRA to ensure what is transmittable to the public and a code put in place which ascertains that excessive grotesque behaviour which perturbs the masses is not shown on TV.