The
media in Pakistan has expanded exponentially over the last decade. Newspapers,
television channels, FM radio stations, have mushroomed. This constitutes the
formal, mainstream media. We now also have what is called the social media, but
since it is not regulated and its contours are unclear yet, we shall focus only
on the mainstream.
What
has changed? Or to put it differently, has anything changed from the times when
the state owned and controlled the media? A quick response would be, much has
changed. The government and, by extension, the state, does not have the
monopoly over news and its dissemination. There are ‘independent’ sources of
news, and governments and bureaucracies have to concede space to them and by
doing so be sensitive to what the people want or are saying.
In
a broad sense this is not entirely untrue. The direct monopoly of government is
definitely gone, never to return. That is a settled issue. However, and this is
where the rub is, has the diffusion of that monopoly led to a more equitable
order – or has it created other centres of power that are now partners with the
government is sustaining the old structures? This, evidently, is an important
question and is being asked by students of the media and its practices, as well
as the practitioners, the working journalists.
Take
the example of this newspaper, a venture put together with little money by a
team of working journalists. Why did they feel the need for this? All of them
have been journalists for long years, working at mainstream newspapers. And
while it is commendable at any stage for a journalist to try and become an
entrepreneur, it is equally important to see whether there are any compulsions
other than simply the desire to take the leap from working for a newspaper to
producing one that might have got them into this venture.
The
government and interest groups have devised new ways to control the media and
the very content of the news itself. Interests are now aligned and while
frictions arise, the broader policy of covering the flanks works well for all
concerned at different levels of influence and intrigue.
Eminent
journalists, Dr Moeed Pirzada and Fahd Husain wrote a policy brief on the
media, especially news channels, for Jinnah Institute last year. At one place,
they ask the question, “So what went wrong?” Their answer:
“The
list is long: the inability of TV channels to develop mature editorial
scrutiny; the failure of Musharraf’s bureaucracy to define clear rules and
framework for cross-media ownership; the near strangulating control on new TV
channels by powerful private investors euphemistically referred to as ‘Seths’
who own and use these public platforms in pursuance of their personal, economic
and political interests; the inability of the governments and the media to
develop any consensus on a code of conduct for journalists or for limiting the
power of “neo-capitalists” on editorial decision-making; the mushroom growth of
small cable operators who generate revenues in excess of Rs. 40 billion without
sharing a dime with the content producers i.e., the TV channels, thus forcing
the channels to rely exclusively on commercial advertisements; the total
dependence of marketing and buying houses on western-style rating meters that
are mostly located in poor and uneducated households and have produced a ‘race
towards the bottom’ in terms of the quality and taste of the content that is
being produced.”
This
is not an exhaustive list. Add to this the miasma of Pakistan’s power
structures and the partnership between media houses and the governments and
bureaucracies and we have, for the most part, the continuation of old
client-patron relations in a different and more complex form.
This
is an environment where working journalists don’t have much space to be
independent. There are newspapers that have altogether got rid of the
institution of the editor and where the placement of the news and its value are
determined by the owners and their interests rather than professional ethics.
In other publications, the editors, for the most part, play a dummy role. In
other instances, working journalists and editors have developed their own
interests and operate on the periphery of this giant system of IOUs.
H
L Mencken, the pipe-smoking American journalist, essayist and satirist, is an
iconic figure in the history of American journalism. In his essay, “Journalism
in America”, this is what he wrote:
“Most
of the evils that continue to beset American journalism today [are owed] simply
and solely to the stupidity, cowardice and Philistinism of working newspaper
men. The majority of them, in almost every American city, are still
ignoramuses, and proud of it... All the knowledge that they pack into their brains
is... a mass of trivialities and puerilities; to recite it would be to make
even a barber beg for mercy. What is missing from it, in brief, is everything
worth knowing — everything that enters into the common knowledge of educated
men...A man with so little intellectual enterprise that, dealing with news
daily, he can go through life without taking in any news that is worth knowing
— such a man, you may be sure, is lacking in professional dignity quite as much
as he is lacking in curiosity. The delicate thing called honour can never be a
function of stupidity.”
Shear
Mencken’s great essay of references to America and it depicts, amazingly
accurately, the state of journalism in Pakistan.
It
is from this perspective that I would like to commend the group of journalists
who have jumped into the unknown with this newspaper. More power to them!
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