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Amnesty International has documented the increasingly perilous job of reporting the news in Pakistan, citing 34 working journalists killed in the last six years as their reports antagonized violent forces ranging from the government’s fearsome intelligence agency to the Taliban and other armed groups, as well as powerful political factions out to squelch media criticism.
“Pakistan’s media community is effectively under siege,” warned David Griffiths, Asia-Pacific deputy director for Amnesty International, who found little protection offered by the government that took power in 2008 when the nation shifted from dictatorship to democracy. The report, based on interviews with more than 100 journalists, was issued last week, just days after Hamid Mir, a leading television newscaster, was shot six times by attackers while his car was stuck in Karachi traffic. He survived, but the attack deepened fears among Pakistani journalists about the wave of brazen murders, abductions and threats to reporters’ families that have become a serious occupational hazard in the nation’s media industry.
The arrival of a raw democracy in Pakistan has encouraged journalists to focus on government corruption, which in turn has made celebrities of leading journalists. It has also made them inviting targets for their enemies. And “virulent rivalries” among media barons have left the news industry far from united in demanding responsible government protection, according to Declan Walsh of The New York Times. The government denies tolerating or instigating the violence, but only one of the 34 cited killings resulted in a prosecution.
Journalists cited in the report said their work on human rights abuses and corruption in the national security apparatus has provoked intimidation and violence from the military spy agency ISI.
The workaday danger was well summarized in 2012 by Umar Cheema, a leading investigative journalist who was abducted and beaten in a suspected attack by intelligence agents: “Pakistan has become a country where the corrupt enjoy immunity and killers enjoy impunity.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/opinion/no-country-for-journalists.html?src=twrhp&_r=0
“Pakistan’s media community is effectively under siege,” warned David Griffiths, Asia-Pacific deputy director for Amnesty International, who found little protection offered by the government that took power in 2008 when the nation shifted from dictatorship to democracy. The report, based on interviews with more than 100 journalists, was issued last week, just days after Hamid Mir, a leading television newscaster, was shot six times by attackers while his car was stuck in Karachi traffic. He survived, but the attack deepened fears among Pakistani journalists about the wave of brazen murders, abductions and threats to reporters’ families that have become a serious occupational hazard in the nation’s media industry.
The arrival of a raw democracy in Pakistan has encouraged journalists to focus on government corruption, which in turn has made celebrities of leading journalists. It has also made them inviting targets for their enemies. And “virulent rivalries” among media barons have left the news industry far from united in demanding responsible government protection, according to Declan Walsh of The New York Times. The government denies tolerating or instigating the violence, but only one of the 34 cited killings resulted in a prosecution.
Journalists cited in the report said their work on human rights abuses and corruption in the national security apparatus has provoked intimidation and violence from the military spy agency ISI.
The workaday danger was well summarized in 2012 by Umar Cheema, a leading investigative journalist who was abducted and beaten in a suspected attack by intelligence agents: “Pakistan has become a country where the corrupt enjoy immunity and killers enjoy impunity.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/opinion/no-country-for-journalists.html?src=twrhp&_r=0
