Do you pay attention to how those governing our country assess any article or news report about the problems in our country? If there is a report or article saying the economy is not doing well, you must have heard the cries of “our economy is soaring”…
Even if you offer criticism backed by tangible figures, that same person will complain right along with you. You speak of the system in the country, and the Prime Minister—who is at the head of the country and even boasts of having 30 MPs, yet cannot convene Parliament because of a quorum problem—will say along with you that change is needed. But he is the one who should be doing it. Take note: those with the authority to change and fix things are generally the ones who offer advice. Most of the people who say, “This needs to be changed,” “We need change,” or “Regulations should be introduced” are the very people who should be doing what they say. This is where the skill of mismanagement immediately becomes apparent.
The people who shout about the press’s credibility and reliability, but write commissioned pieces or produce commissioned news reports—something we all know perfectly well—are the ones who are really ruining the media. As a result, the news in our media is generally considered biased. Even if you think you have produced a very important report or written a very important article, because of the perception created by these people, it is not the content of your report or article that is debated, but its bias; unfortunately, after that, what has been written or published matters very little. In other words, our press, too, has people skilled in mismanagement. A recent incident has laid bare where our media is headed. In the LTB elections, a party that most strongly champions press freedom bought the “banner headlines” of six or seven newspapers. Advertisements, rather than news, appeared there. This practice, carried out by those newspapers supposedly to make money, lays bare why the press has a problem with credibility and reliability. There is no excuse that can legitimize this. I’m glad I write for a newspaper that did not sell its banner headline.
Today, as I traditionally do around this time every year, I sat down at my computer to write about how clean our seas are. For years, I have thought that writing this would make me happy and/or that by writing it I was fulfilling my responsibility. To be honest, for the reasons I mentioned above, I know perfectly well that it is a silly and futile endeavor, a piece written for the sake of writing. But, as I said, the notion that “I’ll fulfill my responsibility, and let those who don’t do theirs answer for it” keeps driving me to write that piece again and again. The result is a process that leads entirely to waste. For the reasons I mentioned above, writing about problems is nothing more than a waste of paper and time.
Because when you write a critical piece about something, it either receives no attention at all, or the person you criticize puts you in a category, or complains about the very issue you criticized. In this respect, the managers or officials criticized in our country have considerable experience. They have become experts at it.
I am not writing this piece, which I began in order to write about the cleanliness of our seas, expecting the authorities to take any notice of it; there is no doubt that, for the reasons I explained above, they will not.
Yet it takes considerable skill to make unlivable a country blessed with a beauty many other countries could only dream of.
We, too, have many people with this skill...
Hoping that we will have managers who are not skilled in mismanagement...