- Not the healthiest of pictures
Pakistan has found itself on World Press Freedom Day (Sunday) to have a press which is under two types of attack, both through censorship and other means of repression, and on the other, economically. It faces the challenge of operating in the post-covid-19 world, but that it shares with everyone. Otherwise, its specific challenges are those it faces because the government wants it be an official channel of carefully selected information rather than a check on it, an exposer of its misdeeds and a provider of the information that a citizen needs to make informed electoral choices.
The paradox is that the present PTI government claims that it is a champion of press freedom, and constantly congratulates itself on its giving of freedom to the press. However, the media has a different experience. Blocking of newspapers and TV channels happens. Threats are made. Journalists disappear. Some are found dead. Some go into self-exile, others are shot. Messages are sent. More wearing, it used to be that rules were clear; now they are not. It used to be made clear how far reporting could go. Now hints are dropped. What is today kosher is forbidden totally tomorrow. It is as if it is expected that newsrooms will practice self-censorship, and will obey the wishes of unseen hands.
Another tool of manipulation that is being used is that of government advertisements. Their role has become all the more prominent now that the covid-19 pandemic has sent the economy, and thus advertising revenues, tumbling, but even before the pandemic, print and broadcast media both faced shrinking revenues as readers and viewers began abandoning them, choosing to go to online sources of news and entertainment. At this time, for the government to hold back on dues because of advertisements which have already appeared, is to hobble the press. A rank favouritism continues to be practiced in the giving of advertisements, not according to merit, but the readiness of the publication to be pliable. It had been claimed by the PTI that it would bring tabdeeli (change); that it has not in the area of press freedom. There it seems that the tired old methods of the past continue to be used, with what space is being created from freedom is created by the media itself.
