Last week a couple of TV news channels abruptly went off the air for some hours in certain parts of Karachi and Hyderabad. This immediately provoked an outrage in the media after technical factors were ruled out and cable operators let it be known at whose behest the dastardly deed had been done. Words like “freedom” and “democracy” were bandied about, the government was pilloried, and viewers were indignantly regaled. And so it should be. Media freedom has been hard won and we will not be easily silenced.
But if everyone knew who pulled the plug and why, curiously enough not a single journalist or fearless anchor in search of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth could pluck up the courage to say whodunit. Self-censorship? Self-preservation? Or what?
On the heels of this incident comes another interesting case. A former highly paid and “rated” anchor with a private channel who joined the government in search of better prospects was interviewed on his old alma by a former colleague who prides himself on his “devilish” reputation. Since the program flaunts a “Hardtalk” approach, the current anchor expectedly asked the former anchor some rather pointed personal questions. The program was recorded but pulled (not aired) after the former anchor complained to the owners. Self-censorship? Friendship? Blackmail? Or what?
The aggrieved anchor whose program was not aired resigned in protest and leaked his plight to colleagues on other channels. But curiously enough, this was not news, so it was swept under the rug. So he sulked and waited. Doubtless, however, future victims will not get away so easily by invoking friends in high places and press freedom will be protected.
Closer to home, another “rated” anchor and columnist launched a vicious personal attack last month on the editor of this paper by name. Our sin is a continuing and critical focus on the political shortcomings of elements of the mainstream media who lack objectivity and neutrality because of their readiness to substitute raw emotions like passion and anger and personal affront for a cool, rational, knowledge-based discourse of ideas and events. This failing is common enough in tabloid media anywhere in the world – indeed it is the defining characteristic of “yellow” journalism, which is a euphemism for lies, lies and more damned lies. But when it creeps into the mainstream media and begins to dominate it, it is cause for alarm.
However, we have always discussed ideas, opinions, views, and never attributed them to any one in particular, nor named names or alleged motives (Indian or American agent, government stooge, establishment hack etc) because that would debase the debate and render it counter-productive. But this particular champion of truth vented his spleen onthe editor of this paper by accusing him in a newspaper column of “nurturing dogs, being an alcoholic, taking money from India and America, poking fun at Believers and exhorting General (retired) Pervez Musharraf to launch a military assault on the Red Mosque last July” in which hundreds of the Faithful were killed, provoking suicide attacks by their fellow Believers in Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and Jihadis on the agencies of the state and their ‘collaborators’ everywhere. The charges are all lies.
One should not mind those who don’t like dogs in the house. But unfortunately his reference is not to dogs as dirty dogs but to colleagues and fellow journalists as dogs. Allegations of drunken driving can also be forgiven even though one’s record may be quite immaculate. But taking money from India (Indian agent? Treason? Court-martial? Death penalty?) and America (Envy? Class-complex?) is problematic, not because it is halal to have one’s palm greased by politicians via PR and ad agencies for writing servile columns in their favour and poisonous ones against their opponents and haram to even shake hands with the “enemy”, but because it is an outright incitement to violence when you link this up with the implied exhortation to the Red Mosque suicide-bombers who proudly claim to have already beheaded over 200 such American “spies”.
Incitement to violence is not journalism. It is a crime for which punishment has been prescribed. Those journalists who incite violence cannot by any stretch of the imagination be protected under the rubric of “press freedom”. Yet not a single editorial writer, or columnist, or TV anchor, or union leader, or civil-society campaigner, or editors’ council, or press-freedom body, or government law enforcing agency in this country has condemned this overt crime against an internationally acclaimed editor and asked for the law to take its course. Where is the code of ethics of this great media? Where is this great media’s self-accountability mechanism? Is this great media pure as driven snow? Why do our journalists and editors and owners consistently sabotage efforts for self-correcting, internal, peer-oriented, mechanisms for regulation and accountability? Surely, the absence of a regulatory body should not have precluded critical comment on this criminal abuse of power and privilege in our case.
The Pakistani media should not be afraid of debating its role in a developing democracy without getting personal or acrimonious or vindictive or self-righteous. There is nothing that debases journalism and journalists more.