Shooting the messenger
Maulana Tariq Jamil has acquired the enviable status of a ‘star’ Maulvi. But what the honourable cleric forgot perhaps the other day was that with ‘power’ comes responsibility. Maulana Tariq Jamil had uttered remarks during the dua(prayer) at the end of the Ehsaas Telethon chaired by prime minister Imran Khan that have raised a storm of protest. First he called the media “liars”. Then he spun a story about some owner of a media channel who had asked him for advice and was told to prevent incorrect news from being aired. But the voluble Maulana did not stop there. He then went on to cast aspersions on a large number of so-called ‘scantily dressed women’ who, according to him, were responsible for the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, such behavior being responsible for the ‘wrath’ being visited on the country. Human rights defenders such as the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), Asma Jahangir Legal Aid Cell (AGHS), federal minister Shireen Mazari and others condemned the callous and demeaning remarks about women, particularly at a time when, due to the lockdown, women were faced with a rise in the cases of domestic violence and honour crimes. On a subsequent TV show, Maulana Tariq Jamil attempted to offer an unconditional apology and a mea culpa by ascribing it to a ‘slip of the tongue’. But whereas he named in the process several anchors and clerics, despite repeated questioning he failed to divulge the name of the media owner. Maulana Tariq Jamil enjoys the support of Imran Khan, who himself weighed into the controversy by accusing some sections of the media of not conducting their journalism on the basis of facts, and suffering decline as a result. This wisdom was delivered at a meeting with a group of YouTube channel and social media activists. The meeting could be viewed by the suspicious as an attempt to combat the generally bad press the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government has been receiving since it came to power through sympathetic internet and social media platforms.
Imran Khan is following a familiar trajectory. While in opposition, political leaders lean on and are often full of praise for the media. Imran Khan’s rise owes a great deal to the media support and coverage accorded to him over the years in opposition. However, when such leaders come to power, they begin to complain about the ‘factual inaccuracies’ of the same media they never tired of praising earlier. In a still immature democracy such as ours, the understanding of the role of the media is clouded by confusion and misconceptions. First and foremost, the general run of journalism has taken to heart the formulation that the media is the ‘fourth pillar of the state’, implying a symbiotic relationship with the state and its institutions that is wholly false. The confusion arose because of a mistaken interpretation of the description of the media as the ‘fourth estate’, a nomenclature that arose during the French Revolution in the 18thcentury, when three ‘estates’ were represented in parliament and the fourth, the press, was so dubbed owing to its growing influence. However, the fourth estate evolved as a public watchdog, whose job was to keep an eye on and safeguard the public interest. This naturally and inevitably often brought it into conflict with the powers-that-be but the media in democratic societies did not shrink from criticising incumbent governments. In weak quasi-democracies like ours, the picture is quite different. Of course there are black sheep in our media too. But the overwhelming majority of our journalists attempt to do their job without fear or favour, objectively, and based on the facts. Responsible editors are open to acknowledging mistakes due to human error. But there is no widespread carrying of lies or invented facts in our media. In fact it could be argued that journalists attract the unwanted attentions of the deep state precisely when they report the facts. The government has the option of calling out individual journalists or media houses for inadvertent misreporting, but creating an atmosphere of a virtual witch-hunt is neither conducive to the health of the media, democracy, or even the incumbent government itself.
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