Business Recorder Editorial July 15, 2019

Media under attack

On July 9, 2019, the federal cabinet ‘decided’ under trial prisoners or convicted felons would not be allowed to give interviews on television. Announcing this to the media after the cabinet meeting, Federal Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood trotted out arguments to assert that this was not allowed in any democracy. The reference at that point was to the interview of Asif Zardari that was pulled off the air soon after it started. If proof was required that the government meant what it said, this was provided by Maryam Nawaz’s interview also being pulled off the air soon after it started. This indicated what the government meant by under trial prisoners and convicted felons, i.e. the leaders of the two main opposition parties. Although Maryam Nawaz posted the two additional videos of Accountability Court Judge Arshad Malik on her twitter account after her interview was pulled, the developments add to the existing concerns about censorship of the media that seems to be incrementally increasing since the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government came to office. As it is, reports are rife about the authorities leaning on critical coverage and comment in both the electronic and print media. There is plenty to be critical of the PTI government’s performance in office so far, particularly on its handling of the economy that has produced protests by the traders and complaints of massive inflation from the people. For governments claiming to have come to power through the ballot box, it behoves them to take criticism on the media or generally in their stride as part of the democratic process and not see ‘conspiracies’ under every bed. Instead, three TV channels were taken off the air for showing Maryam Nawaz’s first press conference allegedly exposing Judge Arshad Malik’s purported shenanigans. Although the channels were subsequently restored, the issue found an echo with international media watchdogs the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF), both of whom condemned the ‘climate of censorship and fear’ that had overtaken the media landscape in Pakistan in recent days. The issue also affected Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s interaction with media in London where he was attending a conference. The media boycotted his press conference and video footage showed row upon row of empty seats at the venue. As if all this were not enough, social media lately carried an online drive targeting independent journalists in Pakistan under the hash tag #ArrestAntiPakjournalists.

The regime of mainstream media strangulation and social media monitoring and interventions seems now firmly entrenched. The government keeps promising to clear the huge dues it owes to the media, which is partly responsible for thousands of journalists losing their jobs. The unpromising advertising scene these days is another factor that has persuaded the media to exercise self-censorship, apart from the heavy ‘leaning’ on independent and critical media houses and journalists. This atmosphere of intimidation and financial privation does no good to the cause of a free media, which is a sine qua non of any democratic dispensation. But arguably it does no good to the incumbent government either, since continued repression of dissident and critical voices that may not totally succeed in today’s world can only lead those in power down the slippery slope of more and more repression. Should this come to pass because of the government’s thin-skinned response to criticism, it bodes ill for democracy, a free media, and even the authors of the repressive regime themselves.