advised<\/a> the media on how to cover the accountability watchdog, the National Accountability Bureau. This was a development that PPF has condemned.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMembers of the media fraternity continued to experience violence and harassment. As per the report while \u201csecurity forces, political parties, militants and other groups subjected media outlets, journalists and their families to threats and harassment,\u201d women journalists faced particular \u201cthreats of sexual violence and harassment, including via social media, where they had a particularly strong presence\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The State Department found that media reporting on topics considered as \u201csensitive\u201d by authorities were \u201coften the targets of retribution\u201d including death, abduction, arrests and criminal cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this environment, the report found that the media organizations \u201cgenerally engaged in self censorship\u201d particularly on specific topics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As per the report, journalists said that they were \u201cunder increased pressure to report the predetermined narrative during the year and PEMRA issued editorial directives to media outlets\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A key development discussed in the report was the government\u2019s increased use of the \u201cmedia system, as well as government advertising, which makes up a large portion of media revenue, to suppress information deemed threatening\u201d. This was an added burden to the economic challenges created by the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In terms of non-governmental impact, the State Department found that the violence of non-state actors against media workers had decreased. However, there remained an environment of threats, attacks and violence that led to self censorship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The US government\u2019s report on press freedom in Pakistan highlights the urgency for the state and its institutions to pass legislation for the safety of the media, to act as responsible state entities rather than the source of restrictions on press freedom and to ensure that the situation is improved so that the media in Pakistan does not have to operative in an environment of fear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pakistan saw \u201c[\u2026] serious restrictions on free expression, the press and the internet including violence against journalists, unjustified arrests and disappearances of journalists, censorship and site blocking [\u2026]\u201d during 2020. This analysis of the situation of press freedom in Pakistan was presented as part of the US Department of State\u2019s 2020 Country Report on Human [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[270,4],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10216"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}