Column

For a country which otherwise appears to be coming apart at the seams, Pakistan’s media has come across as astonishingly robust in the aftermath of 26/11. There has been some amount of hectoring and jingoistic claptrap undoubtedly, but far less than what has been seen, heard and read, say, in the Indian media.

For instance, television channels there were able to track down Ajmal Kasab’s house and relatives even as the Pakistani government was in a state of absolute denial about the terrorist’s nationality. Subsequently, families and home of some other terrorists killed in the Mumbai attack have also been located, and since then several debates have ensued — in print and on television — focusing on the problems besetting their Pakistan rather than just merely trying to blame Indian ‘propaganda’.

This made the Pakistan government’s position as tenable as a chair with no legs, for the evidence from within was more incriminating than what the Indian government had been able to provide till then. The common man in Pakistan had been exposed to the fact of the matter, as it were, which made it pointless for the government to dispute any further that Kasab & Co were not from their country.

This is admirable considering the pressure there must have been on the media by the government and other security agencies. The entire world’s attention was focused on Pakistan after 26/11, and the information being chased by the media was so sensitive as to be even perceived as seditious by the authorities. It takes some courage and commitment to proceed in the quest of truth in such a dodgy environment, and it must be acknowledged that the media across the border has lived up to this onus with greater diligence than anybody in India would have anticipated.

The concomitant danger in such pursuit, however, cannot be overstated, as the brutal slaying of Geo TV reporter Musa Khan last week while covering — ironically — the peace treaty between the Pakistan government and the Taliban in Swat horrifically reveals. Over the past several years, there have been many attempts to ‘rein in’ the media by all kinds of powers-that-be, but happily with little success.

The widespread belief that the Pakistan media would be docile and deferential to authority stems, of course, from the stereotype that in the Islamic world, free speech, thought and opinion is always muzzled. Fact however is that barring a few autocracies in the Middle East, the media in the Islamic world too is throbbing with energy, enterprise and commitment, and with particular distinction currently in Pakistan.

What gives the media in Pakistan the resilience and the gumption is perhaps the daily hardship of survival over the past six decades and more. Ruled by the army for almost half of its 61-year-existence, and now increasingly being choked by obscurantist forces, an independent media I suppose becomes something to cherish and worth struggling for: it also perhaps becomes the last vestige of hope that Pakistan is still the free state that was promised in the constitution post-Partition, so while authority might look askance at its temerity, the media has the whole-hearted support of the people. Therefore, it is vehemently anti-establishment and anti-authority: sometimes abrasively, sometimes in a nit-picking manner, but always with an acute sense of purpose.

In that sense the Pakistan media has played the role of fourth estate with greater conviction than say, in India. It would be reckless to draw parallels, but it would be safe to say that at least the English media in India over the past two decades has leaned increasingly towards ‘infotainment’ rather than the pursuit of truth. Journalists and editors have tended to get absorbed into a cosy relationship with the establishment rather than being hard-nosed fact-finders and opinion-makers. (The vernacular media, largely, has tried to retain its hardiness, even if the decibel levels are getting shriller.)
A rapidly growing economy has obviously impelled cathartic lifestyle changes, and the media, all said and done, must reflect society at it is rather than what it should be. Nothing wrong with infotainment per se, but a namby-pamby media is undesirable and a disservice to the needs of a functional democracy.