Pakistan: Emerging fault lines in the media

In short, for the liberal and secular-minded in Pakistan, media has made it difficult for them to present their side of views on the subject of religion in general and blasphemy issue in particular. This is a censorship being forced by the media itself..

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | Int'l Desk
Source/Credit: Gulf Times | Opinion
By Kamran Rehmat | January 19, 2011

Islamabad: The events of recent weeks, leading up to the ghastly murder of a progressive public figure -- Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer -- in the backdrop of a media debate that has promoted extremist views, seem to indicate Pakistan’s mass media is making a lurch to the right, riding on the crest of an ideological battle that is giving disproportionate coverage to forces in the country that are extra-parliamentary and who have no mandate and no accountability.

Here’s the paradox: the result of eight years of independent, pluralistic media is a supposedly democratic society that is more radicalised and more violent than ever. Was there something wrong with the medium or with the message? It would seem it is both, if the mandate was to promote a more open and tolerant society but which has turned out to be the opposite. How did it come to this?


Traditionally, the media agenda in Pakistan has been dictated by the deep state through its terrestrial monopoly over audiences via Pakistan Television and Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation until independent TV channels started sprouting in the last few years.

There are now about 100 of them with a third of them being current affairs, 24/7 news channels; half of which are in vernacular languages such as Sindhi, Punjabi, Pashto, Seraiki and Balochi.

All these channels have been flooded by mostly unqualified and untrained journalists that make up the bulk of their reporting teams and who made the shift from Urdu language print media whose distinct characteristic has been its rightist worldview deeply coloured by religious beliefs.

It has also not helped that the average age of a journalist in Pakistan has fallen from 47 in 2002 to about 23 now. So, paradoxically, as the media sector has aged, its practitioners have become younger and younger! And the number of journalists has also swelled from about 2,000 in 2002 to about 17,000 now.

This “horde”, in general, has little or no journalistic training or subject expertise and even less understanding of the concepts of balance, right to reply and contextualisation, with the result there is no depth or nuance in their reporting. The result: stereotyping at best and bias and prejudice at worst.

Then there is the space for debate and dialogue offered by the dozens of talk shows on the mainstream channels. Thanks to the rise of terrorism and militancy in the last few years, conflict narrative has crowded the airwaves.

To keep the chatter of the talk shows going, the TV channels have come to rely heavily on the religious groups for all things religious instead of balancing out with views from the publicly mandate political classes.

The fierce business competition of ratings has done the rest to fuel radical interpretations —  the channels have discernibly promoted soundbites that get them eyeballs and this has meant that even politics has been covered with the angle of religion in the last three years. Foreign policy (particularly viz-a-viz Afghanistan) and security policy (war against terrorism) has been reported with religion mixed in.

But the mother of all media paradoxes is that most religious and sectarian groups espousing radical views getting airtime on Pakistani current affairs channels are in Punjab and Sindh that are supposedly ruled by secular (PPP, MQM) and centrist (PML-N) parties.

While there are few voices overall from provinces Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa -- or KP -- (the principal war-against-terrorism theatre) on national media and almost none from Balochistan or the tribal areas, there are virtually no voices from Balochistan and KP of forces that are secular-nationalist (ANP, PPP, BNP) even though both provinces are being ruled by such forces.

The problem with TV, of course, is that in the reporting realm it has to operate in the instant and it can’t plan for the instant. Hence, they go straight for the shrillest soundbites and no marks for guessing who they go to, particularly on issues of religion such as blasphemy.

Take the case of Aasia Bibi (the Christian woman convicted of blasphemy), Salmaan Taseer (slain Punjab governor, who supported her) and Mumtaz Qadri (confessed killer of Taseer). It was the media that helped shape this fateful troika. Since Taseer’s meeting with Aasia in jail and his consequent remarks on the blasphemy law, the media has been giving extraordinary coverage of the reaction by the religious groups.

By Qadri’s own account so far, he planned to kill Taseer in advance because the latter had termed the blasphemy law a black law. Clearly, he was influenced by the views of one religious group leader/activist after another given coverage by the media.

There are some prime time TV shows in the wake of Taseer’s death that are now urging restraint but why were they not doing the same when demands urging death for Taseer were being made while their opponents were being given exaggerated airtime? The media has also failed spectacularly to educate people on the difference between blasphemy and blasphemy law.

In short, for the liberal and secular-minded in Pakistan, media has made it difficult for them to present their side of views on the subject of religion in general and blasphemy issue in particular. This is a censorship being forced by the media itself.

The majority of the Pakistani media failed to report that Taseer also owned a progressive media group, including a newspaper and channel and, therefore, his murder this is also an attack on media freedoms. Also, since he was killed for expressing his views, his murder is also an attack on freedom of expression.

The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.

By becoming part of the story, the Pakistani media is contributing to radicalisation in the country. By censoring only the liberal school of thought, the Pakistani TV media is proving that censorship reflects society’s lack of confidence in itself. Taseer’s murder is not only his life that has been lost; it is also the death of the concept of agreeing to disagree.


*** The writer can be reached at kaamyabi@gmail.com




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