The media in Pakistan is as free as any in the world and, in certain ways, perhaps even more. Media persons have safely trod grounds, which might still be “no go areas” for other emerging media. The credit belongs to both, those who have the courage to speak and those who have the grace to tolerate. That augurs well for Jinnah’s Pakistan.
It is also true that our media is still in the throes of evolution. Its mushroom growth has caused concerns, some genuine and some spurious, that the media explosion also evoked elsewhere in the world.
There are certain universal truths about the world media, including Pakistan’s. It stands formidably united on its absolute right of freedom of expression. It reacts ferociously to the smallest counter argument or slightest rebuke. However, complete neutrality and absolute objectivity is considered neither a moral obligation nor a viable commercial option.
Some perverted ideas have also crept into the popular perception, which negate basic human ethics. “What is freedom of expression without the freedom to offend; it ceases to exist”. There is also a strong feeling that “if you state your opinion, it’s free speech but if I state mine, its hate and intolerance! Right, I forgot how it works.” That is exactly how it works. Charlie Hebdo considers it its right to ridicule Islam, Christianity, laugh at the miseries of Muslim refugees and even make fun of the Russian civilian plane tragedy, termed by Russia as a “sacrilege” but “fired ‘anti-Semitic’ cartoonist for ridiculing Judaism in 2009”.
In the international media, the existence of various lobbies, misinformation, proliferation of sponsored themes, false propaganda and scandalous campaigning against a target country, organization or celebrity cannot be denied. So is its ability to mould public opinion, turn the ordinary into significant and vice versa and imbue issues with spurious importance. To defend its assumed themes and affiliations a media house can be extremely subjective. Money can come in abundance, be it for preferring profit over people or mendacity over veracity. These are the nostrums emerging media tend to follow.
Every culture has its own traditions, customs, and values. The West knows no honorifics. The East is full of them. The West prides itself on “sexual liberalization”; here it still remains in the shadows. There gay marriages are being institutionalized; here the very phrase calls down shame. There a princess can publically admit her infidelity, as in the Diana case, here for another 50 years there is no likelihood of someone following her example. It is not hypocrisy. It is the inherent modesty deeply rooted in religion and tradition. An interlocutor who loses sight of Eastern courtesies and mores is reviled.
The same goes for the innate sense of privacy that might sound strange in the West. Marriage is a sanctified institution. All unabashed references to a marriage or divorce carry affront. The family structure has its own accepted norms where good breeding and grooming are immensely valued. Love and respect go together. Women behave in a certain way in the presence of men. The notion that “it is my life and I do what I like with it” is alien to our culture. We remain interconnected and community orientated. By following trends popular elsewhere, we are following a course that will be difficult to correct. If modernization means immodesty, Pakistan is not in need of it.
There is that fine line between modernization and Westernization. The media should be acutely cognizant of that. To mindlessly emulate exogenous cultural trends or fads is to cause divisiveness in society, especially where there is a contradiction between the endogenous cultural patterns and imported ideologies and ethos. The media in Pakistan does little to faster the centripetal over the centrifugal.
Then, the mad race to be the first in “Breaking News” runs many risks. It can compromise security, put the government in an awkward situation while tackling a delicate issue, unwittingly expose gory scenes or trample on someone’s privacy. To quote a journalist on the subject, “Free speech is not an absolute right”.
Any narrative that can cause a rift or aggravate the misgivings between any two institutions can be extremely harmful to the national interest. There is no bar on any discourse about judicial decisions or weaknesses in the military. But to blame the judiciary for ethnic bias or pit the military against the civilian institutions could adversely affect public morale and its loss of faith in the system and the government. The Indian media attitude towards their top institutions is a good case in point. The last Indian army chief claimed that he could take on China and Pakistan together, a nightmare for any genuine professional, and yet the Indian media never censured him for the unnecessary bragging. Two, the Indian military stopped the agreement on Siachen and Sir Creek, without being blamed for interference in the foreign policy of India. And the Indian media looked the other way when the judge deliberately took sides in the case of the Babari Mosque against the Muslims. The Indian media seems to have adopted these self-imposed restraints.
The media enjoys unlimited powers. It must also shoulder commensurate responsibility. It must act as the custodian of Pakistani culture, its values, traditions, and ideological frontiers. It has to construct narratives to positively influence youth attitudes and responsibilities. It can promote trends and develop public taste for the sober and the traditional, or inject alien leanings that defy the majority’s dream of our family structure that is the envy of Western societies.
The media has to visibly and viably participate in the war against terror. It must provide a counter narrative to deviant ideologies that have so lethally infested and confused minds, especially of the younger generation. It can awaken the mind to the difference between mere rituals and the essence of the value system of Islam, that the traditional mullah, under obligation to the monarchs, deliberately ignored, and that the immoral rulers would never encourage.
The media is free. That is not enough. It has to take people along, make them also free; free to live according to their beliefs, customs and traditions. It must needs to do an improved job of inculating a sense of tolerance in the public and knitting together the disparate skeins in our society. The media has to do more to promote an integrated culture and build a national concensus. The media has the power to realize Jinnah’s dream of Pakistan, while remaining equally commercial and profitable as an enterprise. n
(The author has served in the Pakistan Army as Major General).
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