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VIEW: Governments and media control —Dr Ayesha Siddiqa

The Pakistani media, like anywhere else in the world, will continue to work and cooperate with the government as long as the latter has the sense to use a well-measured approach rather than haphazard bureaucratic methods to control opinion and discussion

There are two opposing points of view about freedom of the press in the country. The government argues the media are absolutely free; indeed, press has never been freer. Critics disagree.

The difference in the two arguments, it seems, is one of quantity versus quality. The government cites the growth of TV channels and publications as evidence of media freedom and its generous attitude towards the media. It also points to its tolerance of criticism: pick up any newspaper and at least one article will be critical; also, editors are not gagged or stopped from writing.

Critics are not impressed. They point out that the government does go into overdrive when writings begin to pinch; it withholds information; there are proven cases of harassment of media persons; media watchdog organisations in the West have generally criticised Pakistan for excesses against the media; there are softer methods of coercion like launching smear campaigns against individuals, branding them as Indian agents and so on.

The fact is that the current period indicates that the media and the government are learning to adjust with each other. The right question is not whether the media are free but what kind of freedom the media have in an authoritarian political system.

One also needs to understand that freedom of the media is an abstract concept. It does not exist anywhere in its purity. Media are an essential component of the state and the authorities everywhere in the world find it beneficial to co-opt the media. I have heard people comment about the narrow focus of the American or the British media during the Iraq war. Most writers, columnists and analysts were not critical of the decision to wage war against Iraq.

A former director-general of the ISPR once showed me an American television journalist’s statement as evidence that the media is not even free in the US. In that statement, the correspondent was talking about how the US media had toed the government line during the Iraq war.

True. But the DG’s assessment was selective in analysing the freedom of the media. He did not, for example, talk about reporting in Britain on the Blair government’s blatant lie about the presence of nuclear weapons in Iraq; neither did he mention those writers in the US who were opposed to the war from the word go and were scathing in their criticism. In Britain, media reports caused the Blair government much embarrassment. Increasingly, the trend has caught on. In the US, too, even mainstream newspapers have come up with mea culpas and are bitterly critical of intelligence agencies, the military and the government. And, let us not forget about breaking stories about Abu Gharaib and Guantanamo Bay.

The media do depend on the state and cooperation by the establishment to survive. The media depend, for analyses, on information from within the government. This dependence for critical information also means that the media cannot survive by being entirely radical. For this reason, some time, the public gets disappointed in the media and complains about bias.

The dependence on the establishment becomes greater when the media predominantly comprises untrained people or those who do not have areas of expertise. Furthermore, the bias becomes more pronounced when individuals begin to depend on their links with intelligence agencies, in particular, to get information rather than developing their skills to decipher information and assess a certain situation. Pakistan, unfortunately, still lacks skilled media persons. Watching current affair programmes I can only think of one anchor who has a relatively better grasp of his subject and appears to work hard on his programmes. The majority depend on co-option.

Then there is the factor of the interests of media barons who are ever ready to be co-opted and have good links with the regime because of their financial stakes. What makes the situation worse is the fact that there is a dividing line between the owners and the editorial boards; this means that the papers, radio and television channels get influenced by the interests of the owners. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that one does not really see radical views expressed by the media.

However, the fact is that there is always a certain amount of co-option everywhere in the world. The qualitative difference between foreign and Pakistani media, nevertheless, lies in the nature of the political system. In countries where the accountability of the public sector is a characteristic of the political system and process, the media will also contribute towards the exercise while continuing to be co-opted at a certain level.

For instance, the BBC report against the Blair government did not express the channel’s radicalism but its ability to contribute towards the process of making the government accountable without being labelled as anti-state or unpatriotic. Similarly, the US media, which exposed the atrocities of American soldiers in Iraq, did not do it out of any desire to malign their troops but basically to abide by the principle of accountability.

The media is the people’s only window into the functioning of a regime. It is also the only major channel for providing feedback on government policies. Since the present regime in Pakistan has taken the major leap of opening up the media and allowing freedom of expression, it should not try to control the process rigidly by using intelligence agencies.

The agencies are generally officered by mediocre people. Their main task is to brand people as Indian agents and/or look at issues from a myopic perspective. I know this for a fact because since the publication of my book I have been a victim of the establishment’s smear campaign and accused of having written the book at the behest of foreign agencies.

The fact is that the grant to research and write the book was awarded me after a rigorous selection process by a board of reasonable and respectable Pakistanis who believed that a study of the military economy was essential to understand the nature of Pakistan’s power politics. The other two scholars who were selected by the same board also undertook research and the results of their work too are critical of the policies of this regime. So, should the government classify all of us as unpatriotic? And for how long will governments in Pakistan get away with labelling people as Indian agents?

I hope the government realises that this is not a smart move. The public will get more interested in what these people, who are being accused as agents, have to say. Moreover, this tactic has been used for so long that it does not work any more. Branding someone as an Indian agent is a tactic used when a government has no credible defence. Personally, I understand the logic of such accusations: they are meant to convince the rank and file that there are enough evil people in this country who are against the military. Nothing could be further from truth.

The Pakistani media, like anywhere else in the world, will continue to work and cooperate with the government as long as the latter has the sense to use a well-measured approach rather than haphazard bureaucratic methods to control opinion and discussion.

The writer is an Islamabad-based independent defence analyst and author of the book, Military Inc, Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy

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