Er...Zine al Abidine Ben Ali - Is it That Difficult to Pronounce?

There are many ways we learn. We learn from our teachers, friends, counterparts, through experience and we learn through media. Media is an influential medium of education besides functioning in many other ways. Media helps to link one society with another through common issues. Media spreads and inculcate values upon us - Western values upon Eastern nations, moral and ethics, materialism, individualism and the list continues. Next media entertains us through various means of communication and to corners of the globe. Media also acts as surveillance.

What is the surveillance function of the media? It means media provides news and information to the society. Thus, one can learn a lot from media. People who work in the media industry must be aware that their role is vital towards a society. They must be aware of the functions of the media otherwise the media would not function to its fullest. 

 

Sadly some of our local English radio stations do not play the surveillance role. Firstly, it's the annoying way some of the announcers speak as they try to emulate American accent. Next is the fact that they can't even pronounce certain common words correctly. Once I heard a DJ mispronounce "eyebrow". A ridiculous mistake from an English-language radio station. Just a few days earlier, there was a bigger mistake. This time by a news announcer who was at her best to sound American, but was struggling to pronounce Tunisia's ousted leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali's name. Next was about Hariri and Lebanon. I was perplexed that she can't even pronounce Lebanon correctly. You'd think that these news announcers would have done their homework before going on air! If she can't even pronounce a simple country like Lebanon, I wonder if she can pronounce places like Krygyzstan and Tbilisi.

Something needs to be done to overcome this. We rely on the media to educate us with vast amount of information. The question is how can the media act on its role as instrumental surveillance to the public when the people within the industry are not credible enough to provide?