WHY I WANT A CAREER IN JOURNALISM

I have always dreamt about pursuing a career in journalism, at first because the written word has always been a passion for me whether by burying my head in books or in seeing my own ideas and opinions conceived in my head being given form and shape on a piece of paper. The quirks of life had me take up a career as a dentist which then swerved into an entirely new direction as an editor in the medical transcription field. This field had its particular appeal to me because it was a unique combination of my two favourite subjects: Medicine and English. Eight years as an editor has honed my skills of an eagle eye precision for punctuation, grammar and spelling. Journalism became a long lost dream locked away in a chest in the corner of a dusty attic in my mind that I would periodically open and sigh over in moments of soul searching.

The one thing that had me seriously come back to my first love was watching Dr. Talwar’s case bitten and scratched over by various media houses. The couple who had lost their only child to murder had also to deal with the various speculations being brought up by the media. All of a sudden, people were so engrossed in their 9 o’clock news that TRPs of various Hindi soaps went for a toss dramatically. I realized the kind of power the media had in forming the opinions of a nation and how with great power comes great responsibility. The media needs to be absolutely unbiased and unprejudiced in any way if it is to stand above politics and corruption. It must take on the role of a conscience in this nation where morality and integrity seems to have been completely forgotten in the race for vote banks and communal politics. This is exactly what I want to do with the rest of my life.