As is invariably the norm, the assailants in both instances escaped unchallenged after committing the crime. While it is too early to ascertain the motive of this second murder of a journalist within weeks (the first one was claimed by the Taliban), it is often the case that powerful groups, angry at being shown in a poor light for their wrongdoings, retaliate with violence.

Journalists have to come to grips with all sorts of pressures, from criminal elements, terrorists, government officials and even the law-enforcement apparatus, which is why theirs is such a perilous calling. A report on safety of Pakistani media professionals presents a bleak picture of level of insecurity faced by them and calls for serious efforts by governments and media to change the present situation where those who kill, injure, abduct and threaten journalists are almost never punished.

The Report on the Safety of Media Workers, released by Pakistan Press Foundation on the International Day on Impunity, documents that since 2001, 47 media workers have been murdered, 164 injured, 88 assaulted, 21 abducted and 40 detained. In addition, 24 media professionals died while covering dangerous assignments.

There have been convictions in only two cases out of 384 cases of violence against media. It should also be noted that Pakistan ranks ninth on the Committee to Protect Journalists’ global Impunity Index, which analyses countries where journalists are murdered and their killers roam free. The government needs to end its apathy and help change this dire situation. It needs to take action to ensure media workers carry out their professional duties in a less intimidating environment. They should enjoy the level of freedom necessary to work unhindered to report on matters of public interest.

Express Tribune

However, while no degree of coverage provided to such atrocities can suffice when pitted against the methodical brutality of the attack that resulted in a dozen journalists being killed in a single attempt, it is time to move to a broader debate, one that moves be­­yond anti-West sentiments and Islamophobia.

Take a look at Pakistan. It is considered the most dangerous country to report in with 14 journalists killed in 2014.

Read: ‘More journalists killed in Pakistan than any other democracy’

Journalists in the country live under the constant threat of murder, harassment, abduction and other forms of violence.

From impunity to direct and indirect threats by state and non-state agencies, Pakistan’s ‘democratic’ environment is charred by actors threatening to eliminate dissent.

According to Reporters Without Borders, Pakistan ranked 158th out of 180 countries on its World Press Freedom Index in 2014, placing it after other conflict-ridden zones, including Afghanistan (128th) and Iraq (153rd).

There is an obvious gap in global media reporting.
A report released by Amnesty International in 2014 cited 34 cases of media workers being killed in Pakistan since 2008 and ironically, this statistic only indicates the number of deaths.

The structured pattern of abuse perpetuated through other forms of violence, including abduction, harassment and threats to families of journalists, aims to place journalists in Pakistan under a continuous siege.

This has resulted in a catch-22 situation, impeding the development of a secure environment for journalists, which is vital for the overall evolution of the media in Pakistan. A free and open press lies at the core of addressing Pakistan’s most critical issues, particularly those related to national security, human rights, transparency and corruption, amongst other aspects.

Even when covering the 2014 ‘freedom march’ in Pakistan, women media workers were harassed. In Fata, over 12 journalists have been killed since 9/11, whilst others continue to survive on razor’s edge, often forced to move with their families to Peshawar to escape threats.

They are intimidated by violent state and non-state actors including militants and intelligence agencies, with no regulatory authority to ensure that they can work freely. Interrogations can result in beatings and death threats.

Similarly, Balochistan is another region in Pakistan where journalists live under the constant threat of losing their lives, with the issue being exacerbated as media persons oscillate between the opposing agendas of state agencies and nationalists. In some cases, journalists who have reported openly have been blindfolded, tortured and imprisoned.

However, minimal local and global attention is paid to Balochistan, even though these challenges translate to an automatic removal of its freedom of expression and struggle for independent journalism.

Despite these chronic challenges, one struggles to recall the attention granted to Pakistani journalists who battle due to their profession every day. Ironically, social classes within Pakistan itself are so insulated that in many cases they remain impassive to acts of ‘predictable violence’.

On a broader scale, what we see is an obvious gap in global media reporting, which clearly casts a discerning gaze based on territory, skin colour and popular myths.

It raises the question of the role played by geographical borders and political positioning in soliciting empathy for journalists by the wider community.

Is lamentation driven by who has been wronged and where they live? Shouldn’t the world react with equal horror when journalists in other countries are gunned down in the line of duty, irrespective of whether the act has been perpetuated by state agencies or anti-state elements?

Should the killing of journalists in any part of the world not equal an attack on the media community at large, irrespective of race, caste, creed, ethnicity or class, or is the media also driven by geostrategic principles? America made history when Barack Obama was sworn in as its 44th president in 2008.

Yet it seems that the cleavage between preaching one morality and practising another remains largely unaddressed, for when it comes to ‘terrorism’, all roads inevitably lead back to terrestrial borders and faith.

In an era when the media has become a critical, indispensable part of our lives, with journalists often reporting from the most treacherous geographical locations stricken by unprecedented risk, it is time that the world began recognising the tremendous daily pressures faced by media persons across the globe.

From a disrespectful public, to imminent dangers at the scene of reporting, to cases of abduction and murder, such instances abound.

There are few other professions that can draw a parallel to such pressures, given that journalists are the bedrock that defines free speech in the world and are positioned as the natural antithesis for myopic, puritanical thought.

Dawn

“Press freedom … is in retreat in all five continents,” said the RSF 2015 World Press Freedom Index.

The head of the RSF told the media that the deterioration is linked to a range of factors, “with information wars and actions by non-state groups acting as news despots”.

Take a look: Pakistan ranked 159 out of 180 countries in press freedom: report

Examples of such groups are Boko Haram and the Islamic State, as well as criminal organisations in Italy and South America.

Further, several countries fell in the rankings as compared to last year, for example the US. The latter’s drop was in part because it launched a “war on information” against whistleblowers including WikiLeaks and others, while Venezuela’s record worsened since the National Bolivarian Guard fired on “clearly identified” journalists covering protests.

Pakistan, where the threats faced by journalists and the constraints on reporting are a dirty, if open, secret, was ranked at 139 of the 180 countries evaluated.

That said, however, some of the positions awarded are curious, and raise questions about the methodology and logic used in ranking countries. Qatar, for example, like several other Gulf countries, is not exactly known for reporting freely on its internal politics. However, it weighed in at 115.

Placed higher were the Central African Republic (110) and Kuwait (90), which, again, can by no means be considered places where there is any degree of freedom to report.

In fact, the ranking exercise falls into the trap of counting statistics rather than analysing the actual situation in its full context, especially in developing countries. In several parts of the world, the growing levels of violence against journalists actually provides a clue to increasing media freedoms since the state or other parties hit back only when there is reportage to resent.

Pakistan is a good example of this: during earlier periods of severe restrictions on the media, violence against journalists was less frequent because information was so tightly controlled that much of it went unreported.

As the scope of the media has expanded, so too has the resistance to open debate. It is a pity that a number of journalism’s watchdog bodies have failed to account for these nuances, for they are of vital importance in the complex web of media repression.

Daily Dawn

“It is a message for the coalition…your men will end up in videos that are even more horrific and will do lasting damage to public opinion in your countries”. This is how Romain Cailet, a militant movements’ expert, has explained the motive behind Islamic State’s release of an over 22-minute long video showing the burning alive of Jordanian Pilot Maaz al-Kassasbeh. In other comments and commentaries that have appeared on this horrible video, there is agreement that IS wanted to show audacity, power and more than that its destructive determination to go to any lengths in fighting what it believes is the ‘right war’.

Since its release the video has gone viral. The world reaction to it has been just as swift. From unqualified condemnation from important capitals, to expansion of the global alliance against IS, the video has been a game-changer in the Middle Eastern cauldron. Even here in Pakistan, a nation that has had more than its share of visual torture in the shape of exposure to lurid videos, images and news for more than a decade – remember the Baldia Factory fire, and videos of football being played with the chopped off heads of soldiers – most have described the visuals as despicable, sad, and saddening.

In this natural whirlpool of emotional outrage and outpouring of sympathy for the burnt pilot, the point is almost lost that IS would not have been able to create this effect had the video not been disseminated so widely. But stopping terror groups from getting propaganda mileage out of their atrocities is easier said than done. The post-9/11 information regime is exceedingly tough on traditional methods of circulating dangerous bits of data. Most international guidelines and domestic laws in different countries treat peddling of information, as IS now regularly sends out, as abetment in acts of terrorism. Media partners in the crime of propaganda warfare done by terrorists are marked for the same punishment as the beneficiaries of this propaganda.

In Pakistan, the Anti-Terrorism Act and the Protection of Pakistan Act besides several other legal strictures forbid all activities that in anyway promote or enable terrorists to spread fear and popularise legends of their brute power.

However, technology has blasted a massive breach in this legal, moral, administrative dyke against terrorists’ projection.

Social media is the new free port where terrorists and other criminal gangs unload their contraband and market them at the global scale. Chased out of the mainstream media and restricted in running websites, they use swifter methods of uploading their poisonous products.

Recent studies document a breathtaking change in the choice terrorists and extremists exercise in making statements about their actions or intentions. One study says social media is now an instrument “to recruit, radicalise and raise funds, and IS is one of the most adept practitioners of this approach. YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Internet memes and other social media networks are the pathways terrorists use to weaken hearts and influence minds.”

Twitter – the medium used by IS to post the Jordanian pilot’s macabre death and earlier the beheading of his Japanese co-captive Kenji Goto after releasing them through Youtube – is the most active of the entire range of social media outlets. Consider IS’ posting activity when they marched into the Iraqi city of Mosul: One reports documents this to be almost 40,000 tweets a day.

We all know about their hashtag heists, such as those relating to the recent referendum on Scottish independence or the last football World Cup in Brazil. This enables hateful messages to reach a far wider audience than the traditional following within its core following.

Twitter countered this social media storming of terror content by suspending more than 1,000 accounts with terrorist links. The effort had limited effect. New Twitter accounts got created in no time. The group’s media managers now upload videos and images that are then shared across the globe by common users and professional news organisations. Social-media monitor Recorded Future found that IS had succeeded in creating hype with a total of 700,000 accounts discussing the terrorist group.

The head of Government Communications Headquarters – a British intelligence and security organisation – Robert Hannigan says that IS in Syria and Iraq has “embraced the web as a noisy channel in which to promote itself, intimidate people, and radicalise new recruits”. More worryingly, he adds, terrorists are now able to hide their identities using encryption tools once only available to government agencies.

What does this mean for Pakistan? Any serious effort to choke terrorists’ information flows and their media reach must factor in social media. Pakistan, being the world’s sixth most populated nation, has one of the biggest youth bulges on the planet. It also has one of the fastest growing social media sector in Asia. Here opportunities for recruitment, radicalisation, and information bombardment to upend social and political stability are endless. This is partly because new media continues to be a secondary thought in all serious debates about how to counter terrorists’ narratives.

The Pakistani youth is plugged into social media. It is addicted to it. In the future this connection-addiction will become stronger and deeper. In the coming years, therefore, the battle for the hearts and minds of the public will be fought in this realm.

What makes Pakistan’s social media arena particularly attractive for terror groups is that this already has a vast, bad neighbourhood – crime and slime infested, habituated by gangsters, cyber snipers, cloak and dagger artists, conmen and women. Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts are countless. Hired labour is used to inflate followers. There are plenty of shady characters around who sell you ‘substantial following’ for a price. Motivated ‘trends’ are created and then made to ‘trend’. Sleaze, abuse, propaganda, lies and hoax easily piggyback on free speech.

The stench of hate that comes out of some corners of this sprawling jungle of opinion creates exactly the type of environment terror groups need for networking. Recall how terrorism in our midst started. In the beginning there was small-scale deviant behaviour, which when ignored repeatedly hardened into a monumental assault on our precious freedoms.

We cannot afford to pretend that social media freedom is a heaven whose pristine beauty can only be retained by letting it remain the way it is. Not long ago social media was a bewitching flower of the Arab Spring. Now, in the hands of terrorists, it is a weapon of mass message dissemination.

The state and governments here need to take a closer look at the turns life in social media is taking – both here and abroad. It can no longer be considered a ‘fun thing’ for the young, wild and free whose gushing energy requires unfettered freedom to express itself. It is far too serious a business to be left to such oversimplified constructions of reality.

Doubtless social media has given voice and identity to millions who were either left out or could not be represented by a top-down, expensive, and elitist mainstream media. True social media’s egalitarian and democratising effect on oppressed sections of society is most noticeable. Correct it is an outlet to let out information and views that get truncated and disfigured when floated through the usual streams of news and views. But like all transformational forces, this too is being hijacked and abused. Pakistan needs strong social media laws that promote transparency and user identification. Fake accounts have to be treated like fake national identity cards, fake votes, fake bank accounts, phone SIMs acquired through fake addresses.

If the state does not allow tinted car windows so as to deprive terrorists secure transport, how can it allow thousands of dubious accounts operated by devious, noxious characters? Let everyone speak, express, critique, opine. But let everyone be identified. Failure to enforce this rule can be a failure foretold in tackling the new ways terrorists are using to promote their agendas.

The News International

Pakistan has been at war now for almost 35 years at a stretch. It all began with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan around 1979-80. A call went around the so-called Islamic world for recruits for jihad against the infidel Soviets. Our religio-political parties, led by the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, not only answered this call with religious fervour but they and their ilk also became the most vociferous champions of the American cause. The CIA flooded the jihadis with dollars and the most sophisticated weapon systems, and assisted by our intelligence apparatus, trained them in camps that mushroomed all over Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. This jihad lasted for almost 10 years, enriching in the process, in dollar terms as well as in terms of political clout, our religio-political parties and those who toed their line, including those in the media, who promoted the jihad with extra passion.

However, our mainstream media kept itself physically at a safe distance from the jihad. No major newspaper sent its correspondent into Afghanistan to cover the war. A handful of Pakistani journalists, who did go in, were sent in mostly by the Western and US media. The Tuesday briefings at the USIS in Islamabad about the progress of the war, mostly confined to the number of Soviet troops killed in the preceding week, used to be the only remote window to the war for our mainstream media and that, too, confined only to their ‘cleared’ Foreign Office beat reporters.

Next, we willingly entered into two low-intensity clandestine wars by early 1990, one in Afghanistan on the side of the Taliban against the Northern Alliance, seeking strategic depth, and the other on the side of the freedom fighters inside occupied Kashmir against the Indian troops. Both these wars were being fought in the name of jihad by so-called non-state actors with the full backing of the state. This war had lasted for almost 12 years, having tapered off by the middle of 1999 after the Kargil fiasco. During this war as well, our mainstream media had kept itself largely aloof. There was no coverage from the war theatres by correspondents of our mainstream media. Whatever coverage appeared in our major newspapers was courtesy of foreign news agencies. However, on occasions, one or two Urdu newspapers would carry interviews of the Kashmiri jihad leadership, which used to be specially arranged by you-know-who to send some specific signals to friends or to mislead the enemy. These wars virtually came to an end by 2002 as in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Afghanistan was invaded by the US and at the same time, the world had redefined armed freedom struggles like the one going on in Indian-occupied Kashmir, as terrorism.

The second Afghan war, which lasted for 13 years, was also covered by our mainstream media from a safe distance. Except for a few who already had the experience of covering the first Afghan war and the one that ‘we’ fought on the side of the Taliban, did cover this war but mostly for foreign media organisations. And most of the coverage of this war by our mainstream media was again courtesy foreign news agencies.

So, despite having lived in a war theatre for over 35 years, our mainstream media did not produce even a handful of experienced and well-trained war correspondents. That is why when war finally knocked on our own doors sometime in 2005, we were caught unawares. And that is perhaps why we have lost so many journalists in this war in the last 10 years or so. Pakistan, today, is known as one of most dangerous places for media practitioners. We have also lost a number of journalists covering the armed insurgencies indulged in by the militant wings of political parties in Sindh, as well as in the ones waged by nationalists in Balochistan. In fact, today the entire country has become a war zone and every journalist operating in this zone, no matter what his beat, has become a war correspondent but without being trained for the job. So, what is needed urgently is for media organisations to set up crash courses for journalists on the principles of working in a war zone. Are there any takers? Guess not.

Express Tribune

We come into this world crying, and by that we are marked as healthy. We leave it with our last words imparting whatever final wisdom they can to those who matter to us. In those moments, expression is free and fearless. All our lives, the desire to express what we feel even if — sometimes especially if — it flows against the tide of our surroundings, our friends, our family, is palpable; a living thing that beat its wings against the warm but stifling cage of our heart and yearns to burst forth. So often, we swallow it back down. So often, for good reason: to keep our friendships, to avoid hurting our family, to spare the dignity of a stranger we do not know, though we believe his opinions to be dreadfully in error. Not everything that yearns to be free should be at every moment. If you gave voice to every thought that flashed in your brain, your social and professional life expectancy would be measured in hours, not days.

We censor ourselves all the time. There is nothing inherently heroic or cowardly about that, good or ill.

It is a way of negotiating life. But when someone else makes that decision for us, snatches it from us, when the state legislates against our expression, we should fight that fight every time. We may not win every fight, perhaps we should not win every fight, but we should fight it all the same. Because even though 99 percent of expression is pointless, trite, repetitive, dull, offensive, vapid or shrill, that remaining one percent is worth more than we imagine. Very little of what comes out of a goldmine is gold but we keep the mine open because, in the filthy darkness, through that hard and tedious and sometimes dangerous rock, we know we will find those gleaming nuggets, precious beyond measure.

Exceptions to free speech, in societies that value it, are defined with painstaking narrowness precisely because violent criminals and (far more dangerously) the state will smell blood in the water and move against any speech it finds inconvenient, using any pretext it can. We may close off a vein of the mine to keep the whole structure from collapsing but we should do so extremely grudgingly and only when its necessity is beyond all doubt. After all, we do not know behind which forbidding tunnel the gold lies.

To be sure, there is a sharp line separating censorship and criticism, the distinction between permitting an action and endorsing it. Refraining from criticism and critique would be as disastrous to free speech as censorship. Hall said of the ever-controversial Voltaire: “I do not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” There is a humility to this statement but also self interest: the right we defend today may tomorrow be our own. That said, nowhere is free expression utterly unqualified. To imagine this is pure romanticism. Generally, any time you use your speech to carry out another crime, to someone’s material or physical harm, you are not protected by free speech laws. A lawyer cannot betray confidentiality. A broker cannot commit fraud or engage in insider trading. A businessman cannot publish falsehoods against competitors to steal their clients. And so on.

There is another class of speech that can be and has been restricted. I will define it here as obscenity, though it carries different names and exists in varied precedents. Obscenity, for the purposes of this article, is speech that a) adds no possible value (that is to say, not a critique, or debate, or even pointed satire but purely meant to provoke or offend) and b) is incredibly offensive to a great majority of people in your country. To deny the holocaust, in France, is a crime. It is censored because it adds no value (the holocaust is probably the best documented genocide in history and mostly documented by the Nazi’s themselves) and is horrifically offensive. Why is the right to pornographically depict even Jesus Christ (believed to be the son of God by the majority religion in France) so staunchly protected and lionised, while holocaust denial is flat out illegal?

Simply put, it reflects what is unacceptable to that particular society. And there is nothing inherently illogical about this, though it lends a hypocritical tinge to the full throated, unqualified lionisation of free expression that so many have thrust to their chests like a flag pin. What constitutes an obscene abuse of free speech will vary from society to society. The great contradiction of globalism is that individual cultural differences, not to mention national borders, are still very much alive and well. If Pakistan achieved free expression and sat down to list its ‘obscene’ exceptions, we would probably not include holocaust denial — we rationally know it to be abhorrent but it does not strike us with a visceral blow — and instead choose to curtail anyone glorifying terrorism or mocking its victims. And no other society would have the right to force us to obey their cultural sensitivities rather than our own.

Is the desire for free expression universal? Absolutely. If you have never felt it, you almost certainly hold few opinions that, right or wrong, are terribly interesting. Is the right to free speech absolute? No, nowhere is it absolute. In a society that values free speech, can you legislate against holocaust denial? Denial of other war crimes and genocides? Obscene depictions of a spiritual figure who is, in an incredibly personal way, central to the lives of the people of your country? All of the above? You can. Should you, and which ones? That depends on the society. But these exceptions must be carefully, narrowly selected and defined because free expression, by and large, is worth tolerating a great deal for.

Free expression is the sunshine and the rain in which ideas, art and societies flourish. A casual reading of the World Press Freedom Index is compelling: there is a stark difference in the living profile of the top 10 countries and the bottom 10. Whether prosperity, education and social welfare bring freedom or the other way around, I certainly know which group I would rather aspire to be in. Because when ideas, ideologies and art of all shapes and forms, good and bad, collide with each other in the freewheeling, madly energetic marketplace of ideas wonderful things can happen. Cultures evolve. New ideas are born that may change the world, or at least our corner of it. Art rises that lifts a people and tells their story.

Truths are spoken that burn us and yet set us free. A small spark from an unassuming soul could ignite a generation, and these sparks are too precious to be lost in the chill of censorship.

No, free speech is never absolute. No right ever is. But every society owes it to itself to throw open as much of that mine as it can. There is gold to be had.

Daily Times

Media in the crosshairsThe media remained the target of attack through 2014, caught in the crosshairs of guns wielded by militants, political and criminal elements and even professional rivals throughout 2014. The country was declared the world’s most dangerous place for journalists by the International Federation of Journalists, ahead of war-torn Syria. Fourteen journalists were killed during the year in what appeared to be targeted attacks – in some cases for exposing wrongdoing, in others for motives that remain mysterious.

The year began on a bad note, with a television channel reporter shot dead on January 1 in Larkana, allegedly for showing a pharmacy selling a drug that had a ‘not for resale’ label on it. The life of journalists it seems comes cheap. There were other incidents too, such as the attack on the office of the Online International News Network in Quetta in August. Three persons, including two journalists, were killed. There were no arrests and, as the PFUJ noted in his report released at the start of the year, this impunity contributed to making the year that has just passed possibly the worst on record for media professionals in the country.

The lack of accountability was visible also in the failure to identify those who had staged attacks on prominent journalists or issued threats. Geo news journalist Hamid Mir narrowly escaped death in May 2014 when he was attacked by gunmen in Karachi. Raza Rumi had to flee the country after his car was shot at in Lahore in March the same year. We still do not know who was responsible for these assaults or the threats issued to journalists. The trend seems dangerously to be on the rise.

It was not only individuals who were caught in the delicate line fire. The Jang/Geo media house was taken off the air for 15 days following charges of blasphemy made during a morning show, with the incident leading to a mass campaign in which newspapers belonging to the group were attacked and all Geo channels erased from cable networks long beyond the Pemra dictated period of a 15-day suspension. There were strong suspicions of rivalries and politics at play in the unpleasant series of events.

Other channels came under attack too, with the PTV headquarters in Islamabad broken into by PTI and PAT activists on September 1 during their sit-in in the capital. For 40 minutes, the national network vanished from the airwaves. No one has been punished for what happened; and no one has been punished for the attacks made on media professionals by political activists including those from the PTI – a party which has repeatedly lashed out at Geo, accusing it of being an enemy agent with activists beating up its reporters covering their rallies.

While the year has been a bleak one for the media, it has also been a time when the need is arisen for it to reflect on its own actions. The issue of hate speech broadcast over channels has been raised again and again. This is a matter that has to be addressed. Media responsibility is just as important as is the need by the state to protect it. We also lost key figures who have shaped the media in Pakistan during the last year, with Majeed Nazami, one of the country’s best known editors whose contributions go beyond the realm of journalism, passing away in July 2014.

The hold of the media over the minds of people continues to grow. It has shown resilience in the face of violence, and its evolution continues at a time when it is clear it must play a critical role in shaping the future of our country.

The News

The Amnesty International report on attacks on journalists in Pakistan released last week offered a precise summing up of the national media’s tribulations. Recalling that at least 34 journalists had been killed during the post-Musharraf period and the culprits were at large except in one case, Amnesty concluded that “Pakistan’s media community is effectively under siege”.

The effect the killing of the journalists and the threats to many others had on the people’s right to be adequately informed of events and trends that affect them was thus described: “Journalists, in particular those covering national security issues or human rights, are targeted from all sides in a disturbing pattern of abuses carried out to silence their reporting. Covering almost any sensitive story leaves journalists at risk from one side or another — militants, intelligence agencies or political parties — putting them in an impossible position.”

The Amnesty report derived its title A bullet has been chosen for you, from a warning the head of one of the two Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists factions had received. It underlined one of the major causes of the journalists’ misfortune — a most regrettable split in their union that must be healed at the earliest.

A similar question was put to Pakistan by a US assistant secretary of state while releasing a press freedom report: “How can you be free when some of your best journalists are targeted and killed?” The US report put Pakistan at number 141 in a list of 197 countries, ahead of Afghanistan and Somalia but trailing the largest Saarc neighbours — India and Bangladesh.

At the same time, the International Federation of Journalists called upon the Pakistani government to end impunity for perpetrators of violence against journalists. EU missions in Islamabad also expressed concern over the “steadily deteriorating environment for the media in Pakistan”.

It is clear that attacks on the media are harming Pakistan as a whole. Lack of reliable information will create insurmountable problems for both the rulers and the ruled. The government, political parties and the security agencies must ensure an environment free from coercion and threats, not as a favour to journalists but to save themselves from the terrible consequences of ignorance.

Concern over security matters was not the only issue in reports about the media last week. During the ongoing confrontation between the security agencies and a section of the media, journalists were being targeted by some politicians, public figures, clerics, militants and ordinary citizens. While some of this criticism is apparently inspired by ulterior motives, media leaders would do themselves and the people wrong if they failed to analyse citizens’ complaints against them. They must ponder over the attacks on their right to freedom of expression.

The questions being asked now usually arise when people feel that the media is using its freedom to report half the truth and not the whole of it. Are the people unhappy about the degree of power to control their minds the monopoly houses enjoy or are trying to secure?

The people also get angry when they believe, rightly or wrongly, that the media is using its freedom and privileges to further its own interests and not paying due attention to the plight of ordinary citizens. The media is perhaps in need of redefining the parameters of its freedoms and responsibilities and removing any cause of the citizens’ alienation. The media needs public support and respect not only to win the battles its calling will always force it into but also to remain true to its ideals.

And finally, the pats on the back the media has received. While speaking on the occasion of Martyrs’ Day, army chief Gen Raheel Sharif lauded the media’s role in moulding public opinion on national security and added that the military “believes in freedom of the media, responsible journalism and appreciates its sacrifices”. The same day Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was quoted as saying that the government, politicians, the military and media would together solve the problems facing the country.

The only difference is that while the army chief was making a policy statement and drawing a line between responsible journalists and irresponsible ones (who have provoked the military), the prime minister was responding to questions the media persons under attack are asking almost every passer-by.

Whatever the prime minister may or may not have meant, journalists should be wary of playing the role of collaborators that political leaders now and then offer them. While they may continue to offer their advice to whoever can profit by it, their real function is to mediate between authority (of any hue or shade) and the people. They would compromise their independence if they moved too close to authority.

Indeed, some of their present trials appear to have been caused by quite a few journalists’ attempts to cuddle up to the establishment. The media persons should offer all institutions the regard due to them but their only honourable station is by the side of the people, especially those who have no voice of their own or are unable to articulate their aspirations. A genuine media thrives not by seeking favours from the government but by spurning them.

DAWN

In the last six months or so, the Express Group offices in Karachi were attacked twice, three of the group’s staffers were killed in the same city (owned by Taliban), our anchor person Raza Rumi had a close shave in Lahore but his driver was not so lucky, our bureau chief in Peshawar escaped two attempts at his home. And what was the response of the media industry at large? Couldn’t care less!
Compared to the Pakistani media, its Afghan counterpart is just a toddler in age and experience. But look at the way the Afghan media has reacted collectively to an attack on one of its members and his family by the Taliban. This is not the way we do it in Pakistan. We don’t even name the attack victims, let alone identify the organisation to which they belong to.

We have fought four military regimes and as many civilian dictatorships. Our struggle for press freedom is legendary. The media is perhaps the only section of our society which has kept aloft the democratic flag during the darkest of the dictatorial days. We take pride in being one of the most vibrant media in this part of the world.

The price for being so lively has been very heavy, especially since the commencement of the War on Terror. Pakistan, today, is ranked as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists in the world. As many as 50 journalists have lost their lives in the last seven to eight years while reporting from various parts of the country, which has now become a virtual war zone.

The perpetrators have been both, the state and non-state actors. Both try to manipulate the media to promote their respective propaganda. Those that refuse to toe their line are harassed by both and those that prefer factual reporting, rather than what the perpetrators want them to report, are most often than not silenced forever, leaving no clue as to who pulled the gun.

Jihadi outfits that now dot the length and breadth of the country did not just appear on the scene one fine morning out of the blue. They were all mid-wifed by you-know-who for a strategic purpose. And the same agencies also manipulated a large chunk of the media to serve as the mouthpiece of these militant organisations. And every one of these three actors — the state, the non-state actors, as well as the jihadi media –– thrived until the very state of Pakistan appeared to be on the verge of being overwhelmed by these non-state actors and their propagandists.

And when the falling out began, a kind of anarchy set in with the state actors trying desperately to control the damage, the non-state actors trying equally desperately to establish their supremacy at gunpoint and the jihadi propagandists within the media industry trying to set the national agenda as they saw fit through their own marketing prisms.

The attack on one of Geo’s leading anchor persons is one of the manifestations of this anarchy. While condemning the murderous attack and praying for his quick recovery, let us not ignore the vertical and horizontal polarisation in the media that has been caused by Hamid Mir’s tragedy.

Express Tribune

The ISI is supposed to be the eyes and ears of the state that is guarding Pakistan’s frontiers and ensuring the stability of the country. The insinuation that it is involved in the shooting of a renowned journalist on the basis of some differences implies that they are indulging in activities meant to destabilise the state. Imagine for a moment that the CIA is being accused by CNN or MI5 by the BBC of attempting to murder one of their countries reputed television anchors. No wonder that the Indian and Western media has gone euphoric in reporting the event. With Pakistan’s reputation and record on the safety of journalists already quite low, this incident has made it look worse and attracted international attention. It has given India — a country that never loses an opportunity to defame the ISI for supporting jihadi elements in Kashmir and against India — another opportunity to muddy its reputation. Similarly, the Afghans who blame the ISI for their ills and use it as a scapegoat for their failures will find an opportunity to intensify the verbal attacks.

Moreover, the country had hardly recovered from the debilitating war of words between the military and civilian leadership that this new front has opened up between the army and Geo, a major media house. Making this more complex is the inter-media rivalry fuelled by commercial motives. Only a few weeks back, Raza Rumi, a highly respected anchor of Express News, luckily escaped an assassination attempt although his driver unfortunately lost his life. The collective response of the media community was feeble.

The very fact that there existed a suspicion of an unlawful activity on the part of the ISI does reflect that the perception about its working, at least in some quarters, is not good. This needs to be corrected through internal reforms and greater focus on professional excellence. In the past, politicians and military dictators have used intelligence agencies to manipulate political parties and election outcomes.

Some of these allegations may well be false or exaggerated but perception matters a lot and it is important that serious effort be made to correct it. Intelligence agencies should be respected. We have to understand that intelligence agencies are an indispensable and critical element of a nation’s internal and external defence. The experience of different countries is before us that when intelligence agencies have taken advantage of the opaque nature of their profession and digressed from their main mission to be arbiters of quick justice or sided with political forces on the basis of expediency, they have destabilised the state and have harmed their own institutional interests as well as that of the country.

Without the genuine support of the people, no security organisation can actualise its full potential. And this is equally true for intelligence agencies. All dynamic organisations undergo reforms to adjust to changing regional challenges and threats. Are our intelligence and security organisations too going through this internal renewal? This is the question that our leadership should be asking. We are witnessing that multiple militant groups in Pakistan are presenting new and profound challenges to intelligence agencies. Until our civilian institutions become strong, the armed forces and intelligence organisations will be the key determinants of future stability. It is, therefore, critical that they continue to build their professional competence.

In most democratic countries, intelligence agencies are subjected to parliamentary oversight on a periodic basis. This also becomes a part of legal requirement as legislation exists that parliament review its performance. It is in the institutions’ interests to undergo scrutiny for improving overall efficiency and building trust between the people’s representatives and defence institutions. Of course, most of the oversight remains secret and members are well equipped to conduct it. In a developing country like ours, this kind of expertise may be very limited and would come with experience; but a start has to be made. Even in mature democracies like the US and the UK there are only a few Congressmen or members of parliament who are considered suitable to be members of intelligence committees. Even among them there are only two or three members who are clued up. The rest of the committee members take a cue from them to vote for any legislation pertaining to intelligence and security-related matters and go by their recommendations on major issues.

Pakistan’s civilian government will have to acquire and demonstrate competence in these areas to effectively lead the nation towards stability.

Express Tribune