When Pakistan\u2019s last military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, assumed power on October 12, 1999, he was hailed\u2014both by the local and international media\u2014as a liberal hero. He imposed no restrictions on the media, and within three years of coming to power, he allowed private news channels to become operational in the country.<\/p>\n

Pakistani media was free like never before. It was making fun of everybody under the sun\u2014military rulers, religious scholars and popular political leaders\u2014in comedy shows that private news channels started to air within months of them becoming operational. It was considered the dawn of a new era of freedom of expression. Before General Musharraf was ousted from power, more than 40 news channels had begun airing news bulletins and current affairs programmes on their screens.<\/p>\n

Former officials associated with his government point out that it was a well-thought-out move by the military government to enact new and liberal laws to create operating space for private news channels. It\u2019s possible that it didn\u2019t occur to the military establishment that the new forces of media freedom they had unleashed would eventually turn against them.<\/p>\n

A retired official associated with Musharraf\u2019s presidency says the military thought that Pakistani news channels would \u201cpull the Pakistani public away from watching Indian news channels\u2014a habit which was harming the country\u2019s national interests badly\u201d.<\/p>\n

But for many, this media revolution was nothing more than an illusion. In their opinion, Musharraf\u2019s regime had started using high-handed tactics against journalists much before the first political crisis his government faced in March 2007, when the legal community began a political campaign against his government. Musharraf had sacked the then sitting Chief Justice of Pakistan, which was followed by a countrywide protest by the legal fraternity. Many senior media personalities came out in the open against the government and in support of the lawyers.<\/p>\n

Mazhar Abbas, the former secretary general of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, says, \u201cMany people thought that General Musharraf banned the media on November 3, 2007, but the process had started much earlier. Early that year, channels received a show-cause notice stating: \u2018No programme shall be aired which contains (a) aspersions against the judiciary and the armed forces, (b) any material amounting to contempt of court, (c) contain any abusive comments that when taken in context, tend to or are likely to expose any individual or group or a class of individuals to hatred or contempt\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kargil and the introduction of private channels<\/strong><\/p>\n

The government\u2019s move to liberalise media laws in Pakistan was sparked by a military campaign in 1999 when General Musharraf was serving as Chief of the Army Staff and had not yet staged a coup.<\/p>\n

In May 1999, Musharraf launched an incursion into Kargil, a mountainous region of Indian Kashmir. Here the Pakistani and Indian armies faced each other at 18,000 feet. In the spring of 1999, Musharraf sneaked his troops in early, taking the empty Indian positions without a fight. The subsequent war had Pakistan beaten back, withdrawing under US pressure.<\/p>\n

At that time, Pakistan Television (PTV) was the only source for television news. Ironically PTV\u2019s credibility among the Pakistani public was so low that the latter turned to Indian news channels for the latest information on the Kargil military crisis. In those days, the prices of illegal satellite dishes soared, since it was the only source to receive transmissions of Indian news channels.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the Pakistan military was fighting the Indians in the mountains of Kashmir, the Pakistani public was more eager to listen to Indian reality created by Indian news channels,\u201d says a senior official of the Musharraf government. The retired government official says this was when Musharraf made his plans to introduce private news channels in Pakistan\u2014and his opportunity came when he became President after an October 1999 coup.<\/p>\n

The Pakistani media turned out to be highly nationalistic. But at the same time, some sections of it transformed into highly pro-democracy force. This was worrying for the Musharraf government. M Zia-uddin, a veteran journalist and the former editor of\u00a0Dawn<\/i>, says the media, as a public sector industry, emerged as \u201cthe only pro-democracy force in the country\u201d, something corroborated by senior journalist and political analyst Fasih-ur-Rehman.<\/p>\n

The Musharraf government was ousted from power before it could do anything to force any change in the media. But the media\u2019s later \u201cexcesses\u201d compelled Musharraf\u2019s successors in the military to contemplate a shift in policy towards the press.<\/p>\n

Geo TV<\/em>\u00a0and the attack on Hamid Mir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Five days after the attack on the life of renowned Pakistani journalist and television anchorperson, Hamid Mir\u2014he received six bullet injuries\u2014his brother Amir Mir read out Hamid\u2019s statement outside the hospital ICU where Hamid was undergoing treatment. Hamid had been severely injured in a gun attack on April 19, 2014, outside Karachi airport. He had landed half an hour ago and was on his way to the head office of\u00a0Geo TV<\/i>\u00a0to host a special talk show on the increasing violence in Karachi.<\/p>\n

Amir Mir, also a senior journalist, told the small group of press people gathered outside the ICU: \u201cMy brother has appealed to the media community in Pakistan to be united in the face of growing threats to journalists and our right of freedom of expression from state and non-state actors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamid\u2019s appeal made perfect sense in the face of growing tensions and war of words in Pakistan\u2019s media industry in the wake of his attack. Within hours of the attack, the division in the Pakistani industry surfaced. Most news channels began accusing\u00a0Geo TV<\/i>\u00a0of serving Indian interests by trying to malign national institutions like the Pakistan Army and intelligence services.<\/p>\n

Hamid\u2019s family directly accused the Director-General of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Lt General Zaheer-ul-Islam, of masterminding the attack. Hamid endorsed this allegation as well, after regaining consciousness, in the statement his brother read out:<\/p>\n

\u201cA few weeks back, a senior ISI official visited my home and told me that my name has appeared on the hit-list. I asked him who made the hit-list, but he didn\u2019t care to inform me about it \u2026 I had told the intelligence official who visited my home that in the present circumstances I feel that the threat to my life is coming from the ISI. ISI was not happy with my stance on Balochistan, my support for the trial of Pervez Musharraf and the issue of missing persons (thousands of people who have been allegedly kidnapped by Pakistani intelligence).\u201d<\/p>\n

Geo TV<\/i>\u00a0broadcast the family\u2019s allegations as breaking news even before Hamid gave his statement. For six hours, the channel emphasised that Lt General Zaheer-ul-Islam was the man behind Hamid\u2019s attack, showing his photo and video clips of his official meetings. Geo TV<\/i>\u00a0was utterly alone in this\u2014the rest of the news channels almost entirely blacked out the news of the attack on Hamid apart from brief updates which stated that a senior journalist had been attacked in Karachi.<\/p>\n

Almost every channel accused it of hurting national interests and acting as an \u201cIndian agent\u201d. A senior Pakistani journalist said, on condition of anonymity, \u201cIt soon became clear that Geo was isolated and rest of the channels were completely siding with the ISI.\u201d<\/p>\n

On behalf of the ISI, Pakistan\u2019s Defense Ministry submitted a written complaint to Pakistan\u2019s media regulatory authority (PEMRA), accusing\u00a0Geo\u00a0<\/i>of going against the interest of Pakistan. The four-page complaint\u2014which included the script of news bulletins, tickers and breaking news\u2014stated that \u201cthe said reporting has violated the specific terms and conditions of [Geo TV<\/em>\u2019s] license\u201d, and demanded the immediate cancellation of the license.<\/p>\n

There was no dearth of Pakistani journalists and analysts appearing on other news channels supporting this demand. Meanwhile, the Army authorities passed orders to block Geo\u2019s transmissions in cantonment areas.<\/p>\n

This would have been an unexpected turn of events for authorities\u2014private news channels which were allowed to operate in Pakistani society to counter the India media were turning their guns against their \u201ccreators\u201d. This led the Pakistani state machinery to institute two kinds of countermeasures to prevent private channels from going astray:<\/p>\n

a) Hard measures like the discontinuation of giving advertisements to private media.<\/p>\n

b) Soft measures like creating a group of cheerleaders among journalists who praise state institutions (no matter what they do) and malign all those who criticise the high-handedness of state institutions.<\/p>\n

The result is that Pakistani television channels are now much more pliant than they were four years ago.<\/p>\n

Newslaundry<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Pakistan’s last military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, assumed power on October 12, 1999, he was hailed—both by the local and international media—as a liberal hero. He imposed no restrictions on the media, and within three years of coming to power, he allowed private news channels to become operational in the country. Pakistani media was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[4,328,123,921,52,88],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7402"}],"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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}