It was a heartening twenty minutes. Yes, Kamran Khan might have lost the centrality to the broadcast commentariat that he had when he was at Geo and yes, he might be a staple in the repertoire of celebrity impressionists (his trademark inflections lend themselves to some easy laughs) but he has had quite an illustrious career under his belt and had quite an admirable and courageous program the other day. Kudos!
Our man let it rip in his program on Press Freedom day on Dunya News. Though other programs might have alluded to the current state of press censorship, he spelled out more clearly the situation at hand. Perhaps the least restrained analysis on the current state of censorship than has been attempted in the broadcast medium.
On issues of national security, he said, we used to be told to toe the line, but now, we are being told to take a line on the political front as well. A political party is the manzoor-e-nazar one now and the government party isn’t.
To make matters worse, he said, the judiciary (admittedly having never shown grace in this department) is also actively censoring anything spoken against it.
Kamran Khan then went on to cite the example of his former employer, Geo News. He pointed out – as has been pointed out in earlier columns in the Media Watch space here – that when the network was effectively shut down across the country, there was hardly a peep from the rest of the news media. Next to nothing by way of condemnation; just the odd column here and there. But now the channel is back after a reported negotiation with the powers that be that has resulted in the end of the hostility between the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf and the channel. The coverage of the party has starkly changed for the better.
Guests Aamir Ahmed Khan and Arif Nizami also threw in some interesting perspectives. Nizami pointed out how the pressure of realigning news outfits to favourably cover certain political parties and trash others is not evenly distributed. “We all know what the writing on the wall is, of course,” he said, but that he himself didn’t have anyone from the establishment reach out to him and make such a demand. On the issue of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement, however, he did concede that there is certainly a proactive reaching out. This is the shajar-e-mamnooa.
Aamir Ahmed Khan said that there is cooperation all over the world on issues of national security but once that has been given out, it spills over into other areas. If you don’t question us about national security, then how about you stop questioning us about issues pertaining to the economy; ditto for politics.
But here is where I have a problem with Kamran Khan’s assertion about national security matters and also his final signing-off plea to the security establishment about letting the free press do its thing in areas other than the national security.
When Hamid Mir brought up this issue with Imran Khan in his latest interview, this is what Khan also said. When it comes to the issues of national security, all countries’ news media stick together and say what the line is, he said. He then went on to cite (as an example to be emulated!) how there are never pro-Palestine articles in the American media. Now that is downright false. Yes, AIPAC is immensely powerful and most mainstream publications would avoid publishing anti-Israeli content, but to say the state intervenes is complete hogwash. And as far as the universities are concerned (there is a parallel suppression of events related to the PTM and Baloch missing persons on our campuses as well) the middle-eastern studies departments across the western world are increasingly completely “in the tank” for Palestine, much to the chagrin of the Zionist state.
Now let us come to the issue of national security. The CBS won a Peabody award for journalism for its exclusive report on the torture at the Abu Ghraib prison facility in Iraq. The security establishment did not want it to be made public. The case that it made was true: that it will be bad for the US on the public diplomacy front (it was) and that it will lead to a fresh wave of reprisals against American servicemen and women (it did) but the network still ran it. In the interest of the truth.
What about the Associated Press’ iconic photo of “the Napalm Girl”? The iconic photo, the bane of the American military establishment, was essential in turning the tide against the war.
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Pakistan’s problem is more than other states. We are a “national security state.” The boundary lines for where “security matters” end are not clearly defined. Everything is a security matter. The suspension of civil liberties and fundamental rights, most importantly, that of a fair trial, as the PTM is pointing out, is a security matter. But so is the economy, if you think about it. Foreign affairs certainly are a security matter. Public finance is; if you were to point out how debt servicing and defence combined take up more than all the other heads of our budget put together, it is an issue of national security. That the NLC’s contracts were a deathblow to the Railways and that no level of good management is going to take the railways out of the rut that they are in is a matter of national security. The shoddy management of retired servicemen’s welfare organisations – powerful corporates, these – is also off bounds.
But my argument for being able to discuss national security matters isn’t just because they spill into all matters. No. Let us stick to a strict definition of the term. The democratically elected civil government needs to make the policy decisions on this front. And if it delegates some aspects to the military bureaucracy, it needs to be the one checking up on developments; just the way civil engineers and Construction & Works bureaucrats report to political overlords. The politicians don’t dictate to the engineers say the methodology of the structural enforcement but do look at and sign off on the bigger picture stuff periodically. And, the media needs to keep asking questions from the relevant politician here and, in the absence of clear answers, voicing criticism and, what is more important, making fun of them.
The lack of clarity in our war against terror and the opacity in weighing its success and lack thereof, our cities, our towns, our villages, our very social fabric, everything is being torn asunder.
By saying we will compromise on this one, we are leaving the door ajar. There should be no cooperation here.
In the oft-repeated immortal words of French prime minister Georges Clemenceau: “War is too important a matter to be left to the military.”
