Microsoft Word Revised Syllabus Ver doc

Impact of mass communication
Our environment, for better or for worse, is mass-media oriented as ours is a new 
style of living, far different from that of our grandparents. We learn almost everything that 

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we known to-day through some medium of mass communications-television, radio, 
newspapers, magazines, books and film. As these technologically produced channels of 
knowledge have become nearly all pervasive, the classroom, the pulpit and person-to-person 
contacts have demised in significances means of effecting social change or maintaining social 
stability.
Mass media communication is instantaneous to millions of persons over wide areas. 
Reaction to the impact of news is equally swift. Riots, wars and the fall of governments 
follow in the wake of news reports at a pace inconceivable at earlier points in history. Almost 
everyone in the United States and increasing millions around the world watch television and 
listen to radio programs. Newspapers magazines and books deliver information .and 
entertainment to men and women.
Every person must learn how to read, listen, and watch-critically and intelligent so as 
to order his life most efficiently and satisfyingly. Those who choose to report, interpret, and 
perform in the mass media can expect meaningful, often exciting, lines. As mass 
communicators, they will help shape our destiny. In short mass media communications 
provides the very fabric with which our lives are ordered and that too to an extent that if mass 
communication suddenly were to cease, our civilization would collapse.

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LESSON - II 
FEATURES OF PRINT MEDIA 
Newspapers, despite their impact on society, have a relatively brief historical 
radiation. Two hundred and seventy years ago, there was but one struggling weekly in the 
colonial outpost of Europe that was to become the United States.
Prior to Independence, the Press in India had a clear-cut role; to play in the nations 
struggle against British rule. It had put up a brave fight in its heroic effort to expose the 
brutality of the regime, particularly in its suppression of the freedom movement. Many 
editors of the Indian language press defied censorship regulations to keep the nation informed 
(and agitated) about the progress of the movement, and especially of the; plight of national 
leaders like Gandhi and Nehru.
With a goal of Independence being achieved at long last, the Indian Press seemed to 
have lost its moorings. It was in a quandary, should it play the role of an adversary to the 
government in power the role it had played with remarkable success or shared it transforms 
itself into an ally, and support the government in its efforts at national development. 
According to the first press commission the press should help secure and protect a social 
order in which justice (social, economic and political) would prevail.
The role of the press in India need not be that of an adversary or of an ally of the 
government. The press should be a watch-dog and act as a catalytic agent to hasten the 
process of social and economic change. The perspective of an adversary role for the press 
derives from the assumption that the press is the voice of the public, is above corruption and 
that the government, though deriving power from the people, might misuse it. It must be 
noted that the press is part of the political process, craves for power, is made up of people 
with personal ambitions and aversions, preferences and prejudices.
As perhaps the largest advertiser the government supports and strengthens the press. 
Both the government and the press represent the 'power elites', and therefore reflect their 
interest. This is why the interests of the poor are rarely on the agenda of public discussion.
The press is so obsessed with politics that even a silly rumour hits the front page. 
What the press urgently needs is creative, investigative and development reporting chiefly on 
non-political themes like unemployment, malnutrition, exploitation of the poor, miscarriage 
of justice, political atrocities, development schemes and the like.