Journalism is corrupting humanity
Journalism is corrupting humanity. It is making people feel that crime is the way of life. If you are not committing crime, you are just a fool. Everybody is doing it and getting away with it. Criminals become presidents, prime ministers. You have never heard that a great scientific genius has become a president of a country, or a great guitarist has become a prime minister of a country. These people are struggling just to survive somehow. Perhaps they will live anonymously and die anonymously.
Do you know, in the times of Alexander the Great, how many poets there were? how many musicians there were? how many great creative artists there were? Not even in the footnotes of history are their names available. They lived anonymously. They made this life more beautiful, they made human experience more rich. They brought something from the beyond -- but they remained unknown and they will remain unknown. And what has Alexander the Great done, other than murdering thousands of people, burning cities, trying to conquer the whole world? This murderer becomes "the Great" Alexander.
This has to be changed. All politicians' names should disappear from the front pages of the newspapers, from magazines, television shows, radios. What do they have to give to the world? Why should people go on seeing the face of Ronald Reagan? -- just a third-rate cowboy film actor. What contribution has he made?
Is there no one in America who has contributed to life immensely? There are poets, musicians, there are people who have created great literature. The front pages of all the newspapers and magazines should be concerned with those who beautify life, who give something to existence, who don't destroy. Politicians should be pushed to the last page!
There is no need to continuously insist on murders, suicides. You may not think so, but it is absolutely certain that your insistence on these stories makes people, by and by, murderers, suicidal, criminals. Who is responsible for that? And now the world is so small that anything happening anywhere, immediately reaches within hours, through modern media, to every nook and corner of the earth.
Journalism should understand its responsibility: it is great. Up to now, it has been irresponsible. Its only interest is how to sell more, how to earn more. Whatever happens to human beings is not its concern. Journalism needs a total change.
A California University has been surveying and studying in California, for one year, what happens when there are boxing matches. By thirteen percent, crime immediately rises, and for one week steadily that thirteen percent increase remains. Then slowly it tapers off. Knowing this, still the government of California has not done anything. Boxing matches should be made a criminal offense! If they create a thirteen-percent rise in crime.... Those criminals will be punished -- and the real crime is coming from the boxing matches! It looks like such an insane world.
Stop such nonsense as boxing matches. But no, Muhammad Ali becomes a great hero -- and what has he done? What has he contributed? He may have broken a few people's ribs, a few people's noses, a few people's eyes, and he may have created a wave of crimes -- that is his contribution. And journalism will give great credit to him.
Journalists have to learn that it is time to become more mature, more responsible: they should understand that just selling stories, whether true or untrue, just for the sake of earning money -- without any concern what they are going to do to human beings.... It is poison that is being spread!
People have a certain psychology: they believe anything which is printed. It becomes something very significant that it is printed: it must be true.
Humanity is raised in such a way as to believe that anything that is brought on the television screen, on the radio, in the newspapers, has a validity. Nobody bothers to inquire about the truth.