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‘Nega’ values on TV
By Nestor U. TorrePhilippine Daily Inquirer
Television shows and stars are supposed to provide the viewing public, especially the impressionable youth, with positive role models to help them live better and more enlightened lives. Most of the time, however, the opposite is what’s happening, as some irresponsible TV people project “nega” values in what they show and say.
Those negative values and standards include a love for all things foreign and imported, “branded” products over their generic counterparts, and status symbols for their own sake—as in the case of TV personalities who boast about their “designer” bags that cost hundreds of thousands or even a million bucks to acquire.
Other “nega” TV stars make their shows popular or controversial by doing features on superstitious beliefs, and passing them off as factual occurrences. This deludes viewers into blaming “fate” or supernatural forces for the terrible things that happen to them, instead of decisively solving their own problems.
Also negatively attractive is some TV personalities’ fixation on rumor, gossip and scandal, especially when they involve important people.
This habituates viewers into developing a preference for shock and muck, and for thinking the worst about so-called celebrities.
What “fun” to discover that they have feet of sullen clay—and are as miserable as the rest of humanity!
Then there are the TV personalities who report and comment on the news of the day, ostensibly to help viewers make sense of how the world is turning from day to day, and how all those complex events impinge on their existence. Alas, many of those self-styled analysts do a bad job of it, because they aren’t bright enough or are too lazy to understand all of the complex issues and factors involved.
Instead, they resort to facile “analyses” that make the issues fuzzier than ever due to their knee-jerk or “motherhood” insights, so viewers are dismally and dismayingly in the dark.
Other “nega” stars blithely lead less than admirable lives, prompting young viewers to conclude that what they’re doing is A-OK, like having babies out of wedlock, etc. Some of these “liberated” spirits even debunk marriage as “just a piece of paper.”
Yes, it’s a free country, but when you have access to media, you have to choose your words much more responsibly, because there are vulnerable children watching.
The worst examples of all are the bipolar celebrities who use TV as their personal battlefield for their loud, vicious and malodorous “star wars” with other faded luminaries in desperate need of public attention.
TV shows feature them because they’re controversial, not realizing that they are “training” viewers to be similarly vile, vicious and “KSP” in their own behavior and interaction with other people.
Everyone who appears on TV, either as a regular on-cam talent or as a guest, needs to realize that the medium underscores, enlarges and makes desirable everything it shows. So, only the best and most responsible conduct, speech and behavior will do!
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