Importance of Reading Newspapers

The Newspaper is all-important these days. Carlyle called it ‘the Fourth Estate’. We read what is happening in all parts of the world and for a while get out of the narrow circle of our personal affairs. We are forced out of our egoism. We become alert, inquisitive and intellectually wide awake. So much is happening every day, so quickly are things changing everywhere, that unless we keep ourselves abreast of these changes you cannot adjust yourself to them or move with the times smoothly and easily.

A modern newspaper is a chronicle—and an encyclopedia in miniature. It records events that happen and the advances in knowledge that are being made from day to day. It seeks not only to inform but also to interest, to stimulate, and to excite. ‘Newspapers always excite curiosity.’___ CHARLES LAMB (1775-1834) (Last Essays of Elia) Reading a newspaper makes a man fit to participate usefully in a cultivated society.

Newspapers help one to find an interest in the world in general. It tells us not only of political or sensational events, but also of new inventions and new discoveries, and what the world is thinking about, so that we may join the pulsating life that is going on around us.

It is the first thing that is wanted in the morning on the breakfast table. It makes us feel one with the rest of the mankind. The horizon of our mind is extended. For a busy man it is hardly possible to read everything that it contains. There must be some sort of selection. One man is interested in politics, another in sports, or cinema matters or commercial bulletins. These are matters of personal preferences. But generally it is necessary for all like to read and to keep touch with the progress that is being made from day to day. Without this one can hardly take intelligent part in any modern discussion.

In the special articles, there will be found much that has an educative value; in the editorials, much that offers useful guidance. Even the advertisements have their value—not only to the businessman who finds them requisite in the discharge of his duties; not only to the students of economics to whom they offer useful hints in studying market-trends: but to the busy housewife as well as to the listless dawdler after the day's hard work. In these days a newspaper is indispensable to life.

But if readers read newspapers in quest of sensationalism and thus encourage ‘Yellow Press’ journalism, it becomes a real evil in life. The owners often exercise an unwholesome influence and the over-all policy of a newspaper is subservient to the interests of an owner or the class or party or community to which it belongs. But newspapers should favour no argument, no group or region. Newspapers cannot certainly be expected to give us only 'the bare bones of life'; they must tell us the cause and effect of a thing as best as they understand it. A critical and indepen­dent readership alone can bring the owner to heel, whenever necessary.

Still modern newspapers have become a power in the land. Afraid of bitter and fearless criticism, governments of different countries often find it necessary to gag antagonistic newspapers in order to maintain their popularity. The freedom of the press is the first requisite for the freedom of the people. Because, ‘We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.’ WENDELL PHILLIPS (1811-1884) (Address, the Press)