Role of the Media in Promoting Human Rights

In the modern world, media has many faces; among those faces, social media, available on the smart phone, is one of the basic needs of almost every individual, irrespective of age, class, sex, and profession. Social media not only keep people connected with their relatives and friends, but also keep them updated and aware of the events and news happening across the world. 

However, this modern marvel presents us with a series of new challenges. One vital issue is how to guarantee that Internet regulations do not choke the flexibility of human beings. "Blocking", for example, is these days seen as regularly utilized as a way to avoid a particular piece of content from coming to a final client. Social systems without a doubt have a tremendous and developing store of individual information, all of it in advanced form. Our national and international experts will ensure that our rights to privacy and information protection are not surrendered to social systems, but rather strengthened to perceive and meet the scope of modern challenges through effective modern media display.

Meaning of Human Rights

Human rights are rights that every individual possess by default (only because of being human). The human rights are the natural rights available for all human beings, irrespective of race, gender, class, nationality, ethnicity, religion, or any other status. Human rights incorporate the right to life and freedom, flexibility from subjugation and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to work and instruction. The worldwide human rights legal system lays down the commitments to act in certain ways or to abstain from certain acts so that it helps to ensure human rights and essential opportunities for people or groups. Examples of human rights include the right to life and liberty, freedom of opinion, the right to work, etc.

Significance of Human Rights

Human Rights are the fundamental rights that form the foundation of a person's development as a human being. Because of such feature, human rights in every country, are the focal point and enshrined in the supreme law of the land that is constitution of the respective country. The fundamental rights have received more attention, and they are now specifically enforceable in a court of law.

The right to advancement is an unavoidable human right that entitles every human being and all people groups to participate in, contribute to, and appreciate financial, social, and political advancement, in which all human rights and essential flexibilities can be fully realized. Besides, it helps individuals to guarantee their essential needs. It also ensures that vulnerable groups are not mistreated. In addition, human rights allow individuals the freedom to practice their religion and encourage equal work opportunities. A really vital perspective is in regards to the assurance of the environment. Human rights secure the environment and help in the protection of the environment.

Meaning of Media

Media is the plural form of medium, which describe any channel of communication. This could incorporate anything from printed paper to computerized information and envelops craftsmanship, news, instructive substances, and various other shapes of data. Anything that can reach or impact individuals, including phones, TV, and the Internet, can be considered form of media. The media, moreover, plays a basic part in encouraging social changes and forming open opinions and demeanors. The media, through its announcement, can put a spotlight on basic developments that affect adversely and emphatically people’s lives, as well as raise the issues that are frequently overlooked.

Types of Media

Depending upon the ways of disseminating the information to people at large or to the mass, mass media can be categorized as −

Print Media

such as newspapers, magazines, or any such printed materials. This is one way to communicate information to the public. For the eras of the 80s and 90s, print media was the main medium of entertainment. People relied on daily newspapers and magazines to memorize everything, from formulas and amusing news to vital information about the country or the world.

Electronic Media

Also known as broadcasting media, incorporates recordings, audios, or composed substances that give critical or engaging data shared by distinctive strategies like television, radio, etc. It is also one way of communication.

Digital Media

In the present world, we are relying largely on the digital media or internet media to get the news a lot more often than conventional news sources. Not only news, we rely almost for every personal and professional work on digital media. It is two-way communication, where people can participate and share their feedbacks. Here, content and information are available in the form of video, content/text, and sound.

Features of Media

The media keeps us informed about almost everything that happens in the world. It keeps us informed about what is happening around us and all over the world. With the assistance of the media, we get a lot of information on different subjects. Media plays an imperative part in the dispersal of data. It broadcasts, prints, and overhauls data from time to time so that the general public stays mindful of what is going on within the nation and within the whole world. The media touches off mindfulness in us by giving data and information.

The media too plays a valuable part in society by raising social issues. The media makes a difference by providing LIVE or recorded telecasts for nearly all-important events. One of the most imperative parts of the media is to teach society, aware society, and educate them to avail their human rights equally.

Influence of Media in Today's Society

Society is affected by the media in so many ways. It is the media for the masses that helps them to induce data about numerous things and shape conclusions and make judgments with respect to different issues. It is the media, which keeps individuals updated and educated about what is happening around them and the world, that everybody draws something from it. The media is regarded as a "mirror" of modern society; tainted or not, it is the media that shapes our lives.

Relationship Between the Media and Human Rights

The media play a noteworthy part in strengthening the human rights and making it available to every individual. However, how can it work to secure – and not hurt – human rights? There’s no basic solution. When it comes to the news media, there are journalistic morals and measures. The Society of Professional Writers, an organization that speaks to writers within the United States, has four standards: look for the truth and report it; minimize hurt; act autonomously; and be responsible and straightforward.

These standards are based on the Society’s conviction that "public illumination is the trailblazer of equity and the establishment of democracy." Numerous news organizations have their own codes of morals but take after these common standards. In the event that an organization does not state its morals clearly or follow an ethical standard, this can be a sign of an untrustworthy media outlet.

As well as planning activity, social media has most vitally permitted us to engage with first-hand accounts of those experiencing human rights emergencies. This has been the core of expanded activism, giving depth and humanity to past impersonal news of human rights infringement. As individual stories about continuous things circulate on the web, untouchables become more associated with the cause. Also, by permitting casualties of human rights infringement to relate their own accounts of their circumstances, social media has come to be a platform for casualties to autonomously move and recover stagnant stories.

Successful Steps Taken by the Media

By the time, there hundreds of examples that we can discuss one after another where media has played a lifesaving role for not a single person, but rather for the society at large. There are a number of examples, where media suo moto exercised search operations and saved lives. Some of the examples are, saving children from bondage labor; saving girl children and adult girls from human trafficking and prostitution; educating people living in remote parts of the country and making available their basic rights; raising issues such as white-collar crime; disclosing the names of criminals; and many more.

Issues Which Can Be Resolved by Media

The media must report the exact facts, but their role doesn’t end here. The media, moreover, plays a huge part in what individuals accept as reality. One of the most critical examples can be found within the scope of human rights.

However, following are some of the issues that can be discussed in reference to media’s role −

• Educating people (especially those, who are living in remote regions of the country);

• Raising the social or in fact national and international issues like climate change, global warming, terrorism, epidemic, etc. and educating people to actively participate in addressing such issues.

Conclusion

In today’s world, the media’s one of the most essential and indispensable elements on the earth. It is also claimed as the fourth pillar of governance along with legislature, executive, and judiciary. Because it has the control to form the innocent -guilty and to form the guilty- innocent, and that’s control. It is possible only because media control the minds of the masses. And choose what is redress. For this social media is the extreme equalizer. It gives knowledge, strength, voice and stage to anybody willing to lock in.