[A guest post by Maha Atal, who works for Forbes and blogs here.]
Once a week, I go to my grandmother's apartment to watch Pakistani TV stations via satellite. Like many Pakistani-American families, we have spent the past two years glued to our screens as lawyers, politicians and citizens agitated for the restoration of the judiciary, disbanded by then-President Pervez Musharraf in 2007. Meanwhile, just as Pakistanis were tuning in, Musharraf and his civilian successors increased regulation of the televised and print media. Journalists ventured onto new media platforms and my mother and I spent many hours following the protests on news websites like GEO.tv, and when these too were restricted, on social media platforms like YouTube. Sometimes, we saw content from activists who used the web to promote their cause; sometimes, we saw journalists wander into the fray to cover it, and occasionally, to insert themselves into the protests. Now that the Chief Justice and the judiciary system have been restored, I asked Ayesha Tammy Haq, host of 24Seven on BusinessPlusTV what the convergence means for Pakistan's Fourth Estate.
SAJAforum: In some sense, there have been two protest movements underway here, one to free the judiciary and one to free the press. But the line between them is pretty thin, since many journalists have been active cheerleaders of and participants in the lawyers' marches and rallies. Can you describe how this happened?
HAQ: When this started [in November 2007], an independent press was a
relatively new phenomenon in Pakistan. We didn’t have a formal code of
conduct yet. The journalists and young reporters who went out to cover
the movement were sympathetic as they saw it as a force for change. The
clampdown on the press brought them in to direct confrontation with the
state hence their active role [in the events covered].
So the press became fairly partisan. During the marches, the producers would keep the frame tight so they never showed gaps in the crowd. People were killed in the streets in Karachi, but the media never showed the bad side.
The Daily Times did a whole series about whether the movement should be transitionist or transformationist. They became active participants not because they were marching with the lawyers but by using [their coverage] to shape government policy and saw this as their role. It was a conceptual movement.
Is there any concern about journalists giving up their objective stance to become newsmakers?
HAQ: There is now a big concern about journalists giving up their objective stance because both Musharraf and the civilian governments have attacked the press on this point. The new Information Minister Qamaruz Kaira had a press conference saying there now needs to be press regulation.
Has the censorship situation varied at all under Zardari and Gilani as compared to Musharraf?
HAQ: The government in general has a short fuse as far as the media is concerned. They tolerate it for their first five minutes, while coming to power. Still, it’s sad to hear people in media say “Even Musharraf wasn’t this bad.” They’re wrong. He strangled GEO-TV, and these guys may threaten GEO but they haven’t taken it off the air. Memories are short. [SAJAforum note: in March transmission of GEO was blocked by cable operators, apparently at the direction of the Zardari government.]
What thoughts do you have on the many new startups that have arisen in spite, or in response to the censors, like GEO?
HAQ: GEO is under attack because it launched campaigns explicitly to bring down the government, as opposed to the lawyers’ movement that has no intention of bringing down the government. After the marches the lawyers disperse. Of course, GEO hasn’t shown anything that isn’t true.
To what extent has this outpouring of media helped to create political pressure on government to tackle the judicial issue? What has the judicial issue and the media issue done to the PPP’s political position?
HAQ: The issue is, the People’s Party (PPP) has never faced a free press, because the press really emerged under the Musharraf years. At the outset, the People’s Party was with the lawyers’ movement as was the PLM-N, really everyone but [the Karachi-based party] the MQM. The PPP used it to negotiate themselves back into the political scene, and then dumped it.
[PLM-N leader] Nawaz Sharif came back to Pakistan without so much as a campaign slogan and he took this movement of “an independent judiciary” as a campaign slogan. The result is that Nawaz Sharif now has the strongest political hand in the country now because he’s actually delivered on an election pledge where the PPP, who actually won the election, hasn’t given anyone a roti yet.
Yet the press and Nawaz Sharif are not natural allies.
HAQ: Any serious journalist, most are pro-PPP, and they can’t ever think of going with Nawaz Sharif politically. But the PPP is not their party, anymore. In a way, they are almost all disenfranchised.
What about the resignation of Sherry Rehman, the information minister, over the censorship of GEO? Are the PPP’s problems with the press endangering their political power?
HAQ: The problem is that the PPP is the most non media-savvy party in Pakistan. They do not seem to realize that the way we do politics has changed, that media has changed, that it’s not two channels and that whenever you do something, everyone knows because it’s live on satellite. Sherry Rehman was trying to deal with this problem and unfortunately the party can’t change.
The PPP needs to grow up. The press is quite happy to help them.
--Interview by Maha Atal
Elsewhere:
- The New York Times from 1983 - General Zia announces the end of press censorship
