The media functions largely as a tool for establishing and maintaining the prevalent ideologies. The media has a very big influence in our lives. It is the main tool of communication and whoever has control of it, makes the audience believe what he wants them to do. Television, radio, magazines, advertisements, etc all persuade us to believe in their version of truth, their version of reality. The trend of watching cable channels has become very popular in the last 10 years. By and large it has become our necessity to keep watching these channels. We don't want to give up watching them because we can't miss the interesting turn our favourite soap might take or who might win our favourite singing competition. But we are unaware of what we are giving to our youth and kids. After watching soaps on the cable channels, young girls and boys start fanaticizing and end up imagining themselves as heroines and heroes. Other channels, like Pogo for instance, show religious cartoons, Hinduism wrapped in fun, which are spoiling our children. After watching all the changes that are taking place in our young, one often wonders, "where are we going wrong?" These channels were banned once but were provisionally restored for a short span of time. The government should ban them for good now to stop infiltration of the Indian culture. -SHARQA SALIM, Karachi, via e-mail, April 15.