DNA Edit: Sense and Censorship - How Pakistan muzzles its media

The Pakistani media, every inch as vibrant as its Indian counterpart, if not more, is currently under the hammer. The country’s all-powerful security establishment, which once used crude methods to muzzle its journalists, has adopted more sophisticated and creative ways to do so.

The disappearance of Pakistani columnist Cyril Almeida’s commentaries, one of the most read in that country, from the pages of the Dawn newspaper, has caused concern. Though Almeida’s editor has said it was a well-deserved break, there is more to it than meets the eye.

The column vanished after the Lahore High Court issued a non-bailable warrant against Almeida on charges related to treason in connection with an article in which he had quoted former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as saying “should we allow them to cross the border and kill 150 people in Mumbai’’, referring to the 26/11 attacks.

Sharif has not denied the quote attributed to him and it needs no rocket science to know who ordered the mass slaying; it is public knowledge, so poor Almeida gets it on the neck.

Apparently, Dawn’s competitors — some of whom may be propped up by the military and ISI — have called Almeida an ‘enemy agent’. Current affair programmes in the Pakistani press critical of the army are routinely dropped. After a committee probing a journalist’s mysterious death recommended reforms in the Pakistani intelligence apparatus, agencies have switched from inflicting violence to other innovative methods such as leaning on vendors to block newspaper distribution and ‘directing’ cable operators not to show programmes critical of the establishment.

Prominent Pakistani author Mohammed Hanif thinks that this new type of censorship is working. It is so bad, he says, that even if Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of the country and Dawn, had decided to write in the paper, he would have been unable to.