SIR — I have observed that the more one is exposed to evils like the battering of women, rape, adultery, defilement and all other related evils in the media, the less one feels their negative impact. the way they are presented in films and magazines actually makes them look like victories!

The media has conditioned our minds away from empathy. It has robbed us of the actual meaning of such evils.

when one sees the picture of a nude woman in a magazine, one thinks it is just about nudeness, but when they get home they unconsciously look at their wives through the eyes of that nude model. If she doesn’t ‘measure up’, it is a question of lost love and searching for that nude model elsewhere.

Ultimately, it turns into AIDS, divorce, fighting, yet it all starts with a nude photograph or pornographic film. Gradually, our society has come to embrace such evils as part of our culture because the media ensure that everyday they run such events as cover stories.

We should appreciate that behind every man pictured in an adultery act, there is a wife
and behind every child defiled there are parents, there are brothers and sisters and friends. all of them have their pride hurt when one of them is featured in such stories.

It is an act of brutality trying to cast that stone despite the long line of sins you hide behind that curtain, despite the fact that tomorrow you will feel the same anguish if your son, your wife, your mother or your sister, brother or father is another victim of such stories. I am not saying that the act of exposing the evil in society is bad. What I am saying is that the motive for such exposure is evil. Our newsmen and women should endeavour to carry out deliberate research about the root causes of these evils in our society and expose them.

Only then will they achieve real victory in combating them. Let the motive of picturing those holiday makers at beach bashes not be to satisfy the sex drive of the ardent readers but to address the laxity in proper parenthood.

For this motive there is no need to even publish obscene pictures. just run articles on the merits and demerits of proper parenthood and use such scenarios as clear indicators of improper parenthood.

The media hides behind the efficacy of trying to expose the evil in society, but has knowingly championed the cause of evil itself. More converts have tactfully been recruited to join the procession towards the evils of money. adultery has been made simple and defilement is acceptable in that procession.

These evils need to be checked by the relevant authorities like the ethics and information ministries.

Robert Ddamulira
Kampala