[sacw] On Freedom of Expression in Pak. Media

[Harsh Kapoor]

=46YI
South Asia Citizens web
-------------------------------
=46rom: The News International, Friday, February 12, 1999

=46REEDOM FOR ALL MEDIA

By Javed Jabbar

Electronic Media Freedom Day is being observed on February 14

There is a schizophrenic dimension to freedom of expression in the mass
media in Pakistan. For all the news, we read the press. Despite its
biases, omissions and limitations, at least we can be sure that the
independent press will give us a fairly accurate portrait of the
pluralism and diversity which enrich our society. However, for the
government version of the news, or the nightly--and nightmarish--gazette
of official events, we watch PTV's Khabarnama with recurrent disbelief
and unceasing revulsion at the self-obsession of the ruling party.

Another manifestation of the split personality of our mass media is that
the occasional excellence of PTV and PBC in entertainment, drama, music
and sports, in promoting civic values and virtues is almost entirely
offset, diluted and negated by the unremitting imbalance in favour of
the ruling party in the political content of Radio and TV. Even the
themes and treatment of drama programmes and other aspects of PTV and
PBC are affected by the inherent schizophrenia.

The occasion of Electronic Media Freedom Day being observed in Pakistan
by the Citizens' Media Commission on 14th February 1999 coincides with
the unfolding consequences of the conflict between the government and
the Jang Group of Newspapers caused by the coercion and intimidation
unleashed by the ruling party. The government-Jang conflict intensifies
the urgency for basic changes in the law, policy and practices to enable
freedom of expression to be enforced across the board in all mass media
and to reduce or eliminate the schizophrenia that has so far
characterised this aspect of our country's life.

Today, more than ever there is a need to identify the basic and
conceptual relationship between freedom of the Press and the freedom of
the electronic media. Even more vitally, there is a need to acknowledge
that the imperative of freedom in these different media arises from the
most fundamental--and perhaps the most important--human right. And this
is the right of the freedom of expression because it is this right that
ensures protection of all our other fundamental rights such as the right
to life itself, or the right to be treated with dignity and equality
before the law.

Whereas the above theoretical and conceptual principles may be self
evident, the actual situation in our Constitution, in our law, in our
public policies, in our practices, shows that Pakistan has suffered from
the application of a dichotomous, divided approach to press freedom and
to electronic media freedom.

Article-19 of the 1973 Constitution acknowledges that "there shall be
freedom of the press subject to law in the public interest=8A". The
selectivity of referring to the press and not to the media is
deliberate, not inadvertent. Articles 159 deals with the power of the
government to authorise establishment of broadcast transmitters. This
specific reference reinforces the separation of the press from the
media.

Segmentation of the print media and the electronic media into separate
molds in respect of application of the principles of freedom of
expression has long since become anachronistic and redundant. Superior
courts in both the developed and the developing countries have declared
that references to "the press" in the context of freedom of expression
apply to "all mass media."

Yet in Pakistan, for over 50 years, we have accepted the selective
approach to the press and to the electronic media like a fail accompli.
This defeatist attitude towards permitting the state and successive
governments to usurp the air waves of the country has had a doubly
damaging effect. First, it has enabled ruling parties, regimes and
cliques to distort the news content of radio and TV to an extent that
there is virtually no credibility left to these media in this context.

Second, it has actually limited the value of the independence of the
press itself. This has happened because, in a largely illiterate
population of which only about 1.2 million to 1.4 million purchase
newspapers daily (read by only 12 million to 14 million, ie less than 10
per cent of the people!) the government-controlled version of the news
on radio and TV reaches a substantially larger part of the population
(about 40 million to 50 million for TV and about 100 million for radio).
This contrast in the audience size of the two types of media severely
restricts the capacity of the press to convey the truth to the people
and allows the "construction" of an official version of the truth to
become the dominant portrait. No wonder, therefore, that despite all the
fulminations of the press every day, the mess, and the governments,
simply carry on, regardless.

The traditional reliance of the people on the BBC's South Asian Urdu
service, and on other overseas sources to obtain a more accurate report
of what is happening in the country, is a useful alternative. But this
does not significantly balance the lop-sidedness of our own perceptions
because overseas media cannot deal with our domestic issues in the
length and in the depth which only our own media can do.

Monopolies of any kind in the media contradict the universal principle
of freedom of expression. Government monopolies of news in electronic
media represent total negation of democratic pluralism and freedom. The
tyranny over truth perpetrated by the monopolistic official electronic
media is compounded and made worse by the private monopolies in
electronic media created in the form of the STN-NTM monopoly, the FM-100
radio stations monopoly, the Shaheen Cable TV monopoly which enjoy
outrageous advantages of exclusivity granted through a non-transparent
process. The apt finishing touch to this incestuous arrangement is that
even these private monopolies are obliged to transmit only the
officially produced news bulletins of PTV and PBC.

A most workable basis to begin reform is provided by the principles and
framework defined by the Electronic Media Regulatory Authority Ordinance
1997 promulgated by the caretaker government appointed by President
=46arooq Leghari and headed by Prime Minister Malik Meraj Khalid. But the
ordinance was allowed to lapse by the present government in June 1997.

A constitutional petition on the subject of freedom of the air waves and
related issues submitted by this writer and Dr Mubashar Hasan and
admitted for regular hearing by the Supreme Court in May 1996 and heard
on three subsequent occasions, awaits further hearings and conclusions
at the pleasure of the court.

The task of achieving and securing freedom of expression in the
electronic media is a collective responsibility of all individuals and
organisations. Let us hope that the present campaign to protect freedom
of expression in the Press is enlarged to become a campaign to ensure
freedom for all mass media in Pakistan.

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