Media Matters in Pakistan

7/27/2019 Media Matters in Pakistan

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Media Matters in Pakistan

Author(s): Imran Aslam and Kamran Asdar AliSource: Middle East Report, No. 251, Pakistan under Pressure (Summer, 2009), pp. 32-36Published by: Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27735299 .

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Media Matters in PakistanAn Interview with Imran AslamImran slam, a senior Pakistani Journalist,spresidentofGeo TVNetwork here he oversees content forGeoNews,Geo Entertainment,ag (a youth hannel) and Geo Super (Sports). In1983, he became the editor of TheStar,an eveningnewspaperthatblazed a trail n nvestigative ournalism uring heregime fGeneralZia ulHaq.Workingwitha team describedbyrenowned akistani journalist amirNiazias "typewriter uerillas," TheStarwas thesamizdat of Pakistan journalism nthose oppressive days. Havingtime nd again crossed the line of"permissiblecriticism,"Aslamwas giventhe choice: soft-pedalor resign.He resigned.

Aslam returnedo journalism n1990 under theciviliangovernmentf Benazir Bhutto.He helped foundTheNews, Pakistan's leadingEnglishlanguagenewspaper, nd he servedas itsChiefNewsEditor, ditor nd SeniorEditor.TheNews is noted for ts investigative ournalismnd expos?s.

In 002, Aslamwas partof theteamthat launchedGeo News. Geo has taken positiononsensitive ocietaland political issuesand has helped toenlarge the pace for ublicdiscussion,dissentand debate. Thenetworkwas shutdownfor vertwomonthswhenGeneralPervezMusharraf imposed state ofemergency nNovember2007, a bald attempttostrangleGeo financially. eo and Aslam refused ocomply.

KamranAsdarAli, an anthropologist ased at theUniversityfTexas-Austin, alked to Imran slam abouttherelationship etween themedia and thestate in akistan during is recentvisitto theUS.

How does the relationship between themedia and the statecompare between themilitary regimes of Zia ul Haq andPervez Musharraf?In essence, the role of the media is and should be adversarial.I say that because as amember of the media, one is essentiallythe opposition to anti-democratic forces in government.

Ultimately, both regimes were usurpers who came to powerthrough extra-constitutional measures. And both tried tocoopt the media. But inevitably fissures emerge as the leadersrealize thatreporting iscriticalof their rule.They clamp downon the press.

During the regimeofZia ulHaq, the relationship betweenthe news media and the government was openly adversarial.The press saw a lotofpre-censorship and "advisories." Ifyou didnot heedwarnings, you faced imprisonment or thepossibilitythat your publication would be shut down. As a result manygood journalists indulged in self-censorship,which was themost debilitating consequence.In the 1990s,during theperiod of civilian rule, therewas asmall opening. Still, the government attempted to buy or coercejournalists to reportfavorably. inceworking journalists couldnot be bought, the management was targeted through tacticssuch as news print quotas and cutting government advertising.

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jaralyto Unpucenrid f he eo V tation,ardi18,2007,n arachi. MOHAMMED KHALIL/APPHOTO

During Nawaz Sharif's second term in office in the late1990s, and even during Benazir Bhuttos rule before him, wereceived visits from government officials.Mr. Haqqani, thecurrentambassador to theUS [thena close political advisor tothe Bhutto sPakistan Peoples' Partygovernment], I remember,came into our office one day.We were running a storyaboutthe corruption allegations against Asif Zardari [Bhutto'shusband and thecurrentPresident ofPakistan]. Haqqani triedtopersuade us todrop the story.Sharif'sgovernment also used intimidationand blackmail tohave itsway with themedia. When Iwas working for The ews,theowner,Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman, was asked tofire numberofhis news staff. e refused and thefollowingmorning whenhe arrivedathis officehe found 18taxnotices on his table fromdecades back,which theyhad probably kept as aweapon tobeused at theappropriate time.The government confiscated ournewsprint and forcedus to reduce to about fourpages. Butwecontinued to fight.We called ita "war on Jang." \Jang s theparent newspaper; the term inUrdu means war.]Shakil-ur-Rahman gathered journalistsat thepress club andannounced that the government was blackmailing him. Hehad taped conversations with Saifur Rahman and MushahidHussain [two high-level functionaries in the Sharif government] inwhich they penly asked him to sack these journalists

and promised that theywould make the taxnotices go awayifhe complied. Once the tapes came out, it created a lot ofwaves and thegovernment backed off.In 1999when Musharraf came topower, therewas initiallya littlehope. In his first speech, he talked about opening upthe airwaves,which sure enough he eventually did.About a year after the9/11 ttacks,we launched a televisionnews channel called Geo TV fromDubai. We had to operatefrom Dubai because, despiteMusharraf s claims of openingup the airwaves, the license to operate in Pakistan was notforthcoming.The reasonhe gave fornot allowing us tooperatewithin Pakistanwas cross-media ownership?print and broadcasting. They said itwas toomuch of amonopoly.Geo TV had a formidable impact because itwas reachingmany more people thana local television stationcould. Initiallypeople in power didn't understand technology?how werethings being shipped out of Pakistan? How was the footagebeing sent toDubai? Ive never before seen the kind of impactwe were able to create in a very short period of time.

In 2003, as the Iraq war was starting and there was excitement and turmoil inPakistan, thingswere changing inveryinterestingways. To his credit,Musharraf tolerated a lot ofcriticism, parodies and ridicule. So we assumed that thiswasa benevolent dictator, somebodywho wanted tobe loved.We

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talked critically about his uniform and about themilitary'srole inpolitics.Musharraf was very telegenic and used themedia asmuch aspossible togethis positions across.Therewas a little [economic]boom takingplace thanks to the influx fAmerican aid. Somegovernance issues were being resolved; banks were increasingthe amount of available credit. There was a telecom boom, too.Investmentwas coming intoPakistan and the stockmarketwasperformingwell. These were thepleasant days ofMusharraf.We were lulled into a feelingof securityand thoughtwe couldkeep pushing the envelope. But after the two assassinationattempts against him, hewent back intohis shell.There wasawhole series of bomb blasts and suicide attacks.He felt hishold slipping.When Musharraf forcedChief Justice [Iftikhar] haudhryto resign inMarch 2007, themedia found a new cause. Thecoverage of protesting lawyers in support of the chief justice,24 hours a day,was unprecedented. When Chaudhry arrivedinKarachi in earlyMay 2007, the city exploded inviolence.Most of the people who were killed in the riots belongedto the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), which was part of theagitation tobring the chief justiceback tooffice.That day, oneof theKarachi TV channels was under attack and gunshotswere being firedat the officeby opponents of thechief justice.Previously,we had had people justbarge intoour offices and

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beat up our people. But thepower of themedia at thatpointwas that all of thiswas going out live.In this period the twomain civilian leaders, Sharif andBhutto, were out of the country.To shore up his legitimacy,Musharraf started tomake political deals. And one of the dealshe made was with Bhutto. InOctober 2007, he issued theNational Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) in order to facilitatethedeal. The press realized theNRO virtuallywhitewashedall theprevious financial crimes and misdemeanors thatBhutto,her husband [Zardari] and others had committed. People inPakistanwere disgusted. Therewere talk shows and discussionscriticizing theNRO.As support forChaudhry and the lawyers'movement gainedmomentum, Musharraf acted likedictators arewont todo. OnNovember 3, 2007, he declared emergency rule and bannedall television channels.

Slowly, channels came back. But we were told thatwe hadto sign a code of conduct inorder tooperate,which was likeadeath sentence on an independent press. Plus, therewas a listof people whom thegovernmentwould not allow to conducttalk shows. Not only did Musharraf ban news channels, hebanned entertainment channels, the youth channel and oursports channel. This caused a huge financial loss forus. Butluckily people came out in support of the channels. Theyarrivedwith flowers and wreaths and danced in the streets. heatmosphere became like a carnival. It gave theowners of thechannels and all of us in the independent media confidencethatwe could take a stand. Finally,when Musharraf lifted theemergency decree,we came back on TV just in time for theFebruary 2008 elections.ButMusharraf was soobsessed by thisFrankensteinmonsterthat he went toDubai to pull the plug on our station. Thelast chance of us beaming out to the restof theworld waskilled. So you see, nothing really changes. Both Musharrafand Zia ulHaq proved similar in the end, even iftheir styleswere different.

What needs to be stressed is that technological changeand the instantaneous nature of the news today caused achange in thewhole dynamic between the government andthe media. The reaction time to events has become very small.The informationsectorsofgovernmentwere caught by surpriseand unable to react instantaneously.Often themedia wouldbreak thenews and the government wouldn't know about it.You would call them fora response and theywould say,"We'rejust seeing this n your channel." Idon't think theyunderstoodhow to respond.There re these bbs andflowsnyour elationshipith hecurrentgovernment as well.This [PPP] government has actually done what the others did:They call us, they tellus tomoderate our stories, theyput thesame kind of pressures on us, but in a more subtleway. Butsome government officialsopenly said to us, "You had better

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not back the judgesbecause ifyou do,we'll pull theplug."Weasked for some compensation for theperiod thatwe had beenshut down byMusharraf's government. Zardari told the ownerof our channel that if e backed offon the judiciary issue,he

would make sure the courts paid up. We refused this bargain.But of course there were other demands about toning downthe type of criticism and removing some of the anchors whomthe government felt were enemies of the ruling party. Again,nothing really changes.What may have changed is thatwe are at a moment inPakistan's historywhere we have a range ofways inwhichculturalexpression ispresent: debates and talk hows, theater,film,women in fullveil, women inwestern clothes. Theseare not only represented in themedia but insociety as well.Everything is happening simultaneously and the media istrying o capture and convey it.Pakistan is a country that has livedwith all thesedimensions.It's an unevenly developed state: There are tribal areas, ruralareas, bourgeois areas, proletarian areas and absolutely globalized areas as well. The coexistence among these forces has beenthe jugglingact ofour society. hat people have different alues,different systems and more or less extreme forms of the samebeliefs had been accommodated inpeople's minds.

Recently, thishas been shifting npeople's minds and that'swhere the danger lies because forces diametrically opposedto each other are moving towards a zero-sum game. In thepast, we had periods where one set of forces dominated theother but they never tried to physically exterminate each other

with the force of a gun. This time around, there seems to bean element that has emergedwhich is eitherdisenfranchisedor disillusioned with the exercise of electoral politics. Somepeople feel either completely marginalized or that theirownspace is being threatened, or they feel that they have nostake and no say in the particular democratic experimentthat is evolving.This conflict is complicated by the fact that it is alsoenmeshed with an international dimension. It is a war thatis being fought on different levels:On one level, it is aboutthe soul of Pakistan; on another, it is about territory, values,ethnicity. We used to believe that the 2002 electoral victory oftheMMA [MuttahidaMajlis-e-Amal, a coalition of religiousparties] in the North West Frontier Province was purely areaction towhat had happened inAfghanistan.We thought itwas purely an ethnic response confined to Pashtun areas andinformed by anti-American sentiment. But this time aroundit seems more than that.

As democracy, hopefully,deepens in akistan, there hould beone system thatprovides justice for veryone, thatprovidesat least a modicum of education, economic opportunities,employment and access to health care?the demandsPakistanis have been making for hepast 65 years. Instead,we

have different inds of legalities, no unitary legal system. Thecountry isbecoming, de facto, balkanized. If ne is committedtothisentity alled Pakistan, how does one contendwith thesekinds of contradictions?

The state is responsible for not being able to resolve thesecontradictions. Ifyou look at India, rightfrom thebeginning,through all sorts ofmethods, theybrought about the amalgamation of all those 400 odd princely states into an Indianunion and subsequently demarcated India along regionallinguistic lines. They integrated the state and latermovedtowards a uniform justice system and education system. Notone of those issues in Pakistan has been resolved.

The debate about Islam and the role itplays inour polity andthe reason for the creation of Pakistan has not been resolved.

You are seeing itnow clearly.Some talkofPakistan beingmadethe "land of the Pure" again,while others are grapplingwithregional autonomy. And we have so many different systems oflaw?anti-terrorist squads, federal shan a courts, local shan acourts?and they are all ineffective.The constitution and its distortions have not been resolved.

The role of themilitary in Pakistan has not been resolved.Neither has the question of our stakes in foreign relationswith countries like theUnited States, India and China. Wecannot protect our sovereignty in the face of attacks that takeplace on our territory by foreign aircraft. We have no say inthe matter and we are not even able to allow some of our

most strategic assets, like theGwadar Port [at theborder ofBalochistan and on the Persian Gulf] to start functioning.It is a trade route that has been created for us but we are notable to use it.We have gold and copper inBalochistan butwe don't have access to it. here is talkof a pipeline runningfrom Iran to Indiawhich could have become the basis for asubcontinental common market, but we are not able to dothat. So we are hemmed inwith all these contradictions. Andthe leadership has neither the vision nor thewill to resolvethe issues.

Are you saying that the way inwhich one hoped for apostcolonial modern state to come into its own neverhappened?Yes, but having said that, something else did happen. Youhave a society that exists and has an informal economy, anagricultural hinterland, an integrated route for supplies, roadand communication networks, and the movement of goodsand people. These are all the elements that go into making afunctional state. There are no major shortages of commodities,even if there are some deliverables that are not readily available,like electricity and potable water.

But political strife is a major obstacle. We need to understand what the Islamist militants really want. If the international dimension were not there, this would be just an internaldispute that could be resolved?maybe not to the satisfaction

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of everybody.But themilitants have made a point. They arearmed and willing tofight, and theirfight isnot confined toPakistan. Somebody needs to say, "Let's negotiate." But thewill to resolve theseproblems isnot there,or the leadership islooking elsewhere for directions.Does thismean that f his risis stobeavoided,wemust tleastrethinkur trategyithrespect o hose lements hathave taken p rms gainst he tate?Thesedifferencesrenotnew,buthaveparticular ntensityt this tage. If ne isinvested in geographic space called Pakistan, negotiationis imperative. But if ne isn't, everything is up forgrabs.Yes, but themedia ishelping to create a sense of shared concerns.Because of the media, an incident can occur anywhere inPakistan and itwill be instantlyon the radar.There will be adebate and therewill be reactions.This creates a sortof sharedbelief in a destiny.

But at the same time there are large segments of the population that do not have a stake in this particular state andfeel threatened by it.Every time the state takes strides in thedirection of stability,these forces emerge.As youhave suggested,theprosperityhat akistan hasseen is not universal. There are people who have beenmarginalized nd although ome of their ngermay becoming ut nnationalisterms,t s ssentiallybout lass.

Some ofwhat is happening s the effect fprivatization,globalization,removalof subsidies and the abdicationofstate responsibilityowards ts wnpeople in terms fprovidingccess ormeans of ocialmobility.hathas alsoencouraged people to seek other avenues, madrassas orother paces where politicalgroupscompensatefor heshortcomings of the state.The only safetynets that remain arekinship, and theseare alsobreaking up. They are under a lot of pressure because of theeffects f globalization locally.Let's move toward a scenario where there is some hope.You havetalked boutways in hichthe ntensityf onflictcan be lessened. You mentioned negotiations fora futuredistinctlyifferent rom hepresent,where coexistencecan develop. Within that scenario, there are other actors,includingslamists.Yes, Islamists, the media, the judiciary, civil society.There is a youth bulge which has its own aspirations andenergy. Leadership is critical at this juncture.When youhave somany crises, you need a legitimate and visionaryleadership to navigate through them. Dialogue requiresleadership. Unfortunately, I don't think this is happeningnow. But you never know.We can hope that a leadershipemerges that can take on these very large issues.

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Media Matters in Pakistan

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