Pakistan’s private media: Free or captured?

[GlobalVillageSpace]

Pakistan’s private media: Free or captured?
Global Village Space |

Pakistanis are still celebrating their fantasy of “free media”; ironically the penetration of vested political and economic interests in country’s so called “free media” – and thus on minds – is so strong and complete that few in the Pakistani media and academia talk or write about “Media Capture”, but this is becoming an insanely growing reality worldwide and more and more citizen groups and universities are trying to grapple with the subject.

A personal experience
I was attending a two-week intensive summer course in Budapest. This course titled as “Media Capture: The Relationship between Power, Media Freedom, and Advocacy” was organized by Centre for Media, Data and Society at Central European University, Budapest.

Living, working and teaching in Lahore, I did observe or hear patchy details of government or establishment’s influence on media but the bigger picture, of our own plight, suddenly dawned on me when I was attending a two-week intensive summer course in Budapest. This course titled as “Media Capture: The Relationship between Power, Media Freedom, and Advocacy” was organized by Centre for Media, Data and Society at Central European University, Budapest.

Read more: Our government needs to stop looking at our private parts

Bit by bit, I was absorbing streams of information from the podium and from interaction with course participants – many of whom were media professionals from across Europe – and I could relate this to my own habitat: Pakistan. I could see it emerging in front of my eyes that endemic challenge of media freedom is subject to potential threats largely drawn by elements of state capture, in order to propagate potentially favorable ideas supportive of government or state, thus enabling or creating the state of Media Capture.

The endemic challenge of media freedom is subject to potential threats largely drawn by elements of state capture

Media capture in a “free” society
According to Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, a writer on the subject, this is pertinent to societies where the media, having failed to achieve an autonomous position in society, are controlled “either directly by governments or by vested interests networked with politics.”

Media Capture, in an apparently free society, is facilitated by an organized network of control over media information through various established sources. According to Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, a writer on the subject, this is pertinent to societies where the media, having failed to achieve an autonomous position in society, are controlled “either directly by governments or by vested interests networked with politics.”In our seminars, Malaysia was taken as a case study of ‘how it happens’. The case study reveals that how Najib Razak’s Government (2009-2017) has been predominantly influencing Malaysian Media through power and has maintained control over ‘regulation’, ‘ownership’, ‘funding’ and ‘public media’ entities.

Read more: Pakistan: Big Brother is watching you!

Studying the Malaysian model made me realize what has been happening in Pakistan. How government’s massive advertisement campaigns, illegal payments to journalists either in business facilitation or cash payments, selective access to official channels of information, luxurious foreign trips of media persons along with top political executives, control on licensing and harassment by PEMRA, all have been used systematically in the past few years to curtail the genuine journalistic freedoms – turning Pakistani media into a “controlled and mostly impotent noise box”

Stem/Mark media research project draws an interesting comparison of growing concentration of newspaper ownership in the Czech Republic between the period, 1994-2003 where pure industrialist ownership increased to 59% and political/industrialist to 33%

Media pluralism is an integral component of any liberal democracy but studies, across newly liberated social and political orders, show that how large private media outlets are growing and captivating more and more of public media sphere. Stem/Mark media research project draws an interesting comparison of growing concentration of newspaper ownership in the Czech Republic between the period, 1994-2003 where pure industrialist ownership increased to 59% and political/industrialist to 33%. It also reveals a decline in pure media ownership by professional journalists. Transnational case studies like on Zimbabwe and Slovakia also indicate the weakness of regulatory and policy structure allowing media monopoly.

Read full article ...........
Pakistan’s private media: Free or captured?

 

[Ranches]

Ary, 24News, NewsOne, 92News, Samaa and last but not the least, not a secret, been captured by the establishment. Thankfully Geo and Dawn have not fallen to them.

Ary, 24News, NewsOne, 92News, Samaa and last but not the least, BOL, not a secret, been captured by the establishment. Thankfully Geo and Dawn have not fallen to them.

 

[Clutch]

All modern media from around the world is corrupt and misinformation centres.

Unbiased investigative journalism is dead. All media is a mouthpiece for special interests and their bottom line is $$$ not the truth.. They are centres of lies or so called alternative facts.

I'd isn't a conspiracy... it's is human nature at its worst. Sensational drama.

 

[jacklord]

the heavier the envelope the more love and lime light you will see from media

Ary, 24News, NewsOne, 92News, Samaa and last but not the least, not a secret, been captured by the establishment. Thankfully Geo and Dawn have not fallen to them.

jang and dawn both anti pakistan they would be banned long time ago if working in any other country both are working like ALJAZEERA TV of pakistan

 

[volatile]

All media are for hire its matter of money there is a lot of money to be made thru black mailing thru advertisement thru foreign funding ,Our media is for sale who ever wants to hire .
FOreign funding is more serious .

Our Iranian brothers are pouring good amount of money
INdians have there own stakes in Media of Pakistan
US/EU funded many media houses (remmember the famous party picture of Pakistani so called Anchors in US consulates )
KSA / CHina have recently started to fund in this as well .

Some time i believe the PTV is best since we know our enemy the American Sundee

 

[Zibago]

Ary, 24News, NewsOne, 92News, Samaa and last but not the least bol, not a secret, been free. Unfortunately Geo and Dawn have fallen to media cell money of baboon league

I corrected it for you

 

[Asian.Century]

Understanding the news media

Oxbridge Society and its co-ordinator Irshad Ullah-Khan were more than happy by Moeed Hassan Pirzada’s lecture in Islamabad last week, where he gave an overview of Pakistan’s media situation, past, present and future. It was good to get some basics sorted out, a description and facts and issues presented, so that people who are not in the media themselves, can have a better background to consider and analyse news and issues. Often nowadays, especially in fields where everyone somehow feels it is possible to have an opinion, we talk about issues without knowing the basics. In a recent column, I drew attention to some social scientists, with scant media knowledge, yet they spoke as if they knew it all. The conferences were meant to be scientific, hence researchers felt they could talk, even to talk down on media practitioners, including that journalist enter the profession by fault. The meetings were about fake news, but to say and write something without checking the facts and issues beforehand is also presenting fake news; it is an arrogance of people in academic and other high posts. We automatically listen to such people because we think they are more neutral and knowledgeable than others.

READ MORE: Six killed, 15 injured in Shikarpur road accident

When Pirzada spoke at Oxbridge last week, he presented facts and issues in an engaging way, as several participants told me afterwards; well, he was not entirely academic and humble, of course not, that one wouldn’t expect from any popular TV anchor! His CV indicates that he has local and British education and experience in media and political analysis in both countries and he has travelled widely and interviewed politicians in many foreign lands – and he has great mastery of the ‘Queen’s English’. His substantive knowledge was what I and the other participants enjoyed – and when he exaggerated, and spoke about things where he had less expertise, he did that without things becoming ‘fake news’.

I should hasten to add that I am using Pirzada more as an example rather than evaluating his specific presentation, including all the tricky questions he handled so well.

He told us that Pakistan now has about one hundred TV channels, but that there was little direct profit in that industry. He was also quite critical to PTV and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, National History and Literary Heritage, as the full name is. He suggested that the ministry has little policy thinking to offer, and there seems to be competence competition with PTV. He criticised the local channels for not being able to cover news countrywide in depth, or at all. He even suggested that he would turn on BBC to get details of major events in Pakistan. I don’t think he said much about the role of the radio, which again is a growing medium in Europe nowadays; and I he could have said more about daily newspapers, in English, Urdu, and vernaculars. I am of the opinion that the press generally has more professional newsmen and women than the TV channels; journalists should rather begin their career in print media and then ‘graduate’ to electronic media, what was more common in the past. But maybe I am outdated, not quite having realized that TV is today the focal medium for the young journalists and talkers?

At the other conferences I above mentioned I had attended recently, there was less basic information given of the kind that Pirzada gave us, especially about TV. Historically, I thought Pirzada could have dwelt more on the fact that it was in Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s time as Pakistan’s president that the media were let loose and the role of the PTV monopoly ended. I believe Musharraf actually believed in the importance of liberalization of the media as a positive factor for people’s participation in development. What we didn’t foresee, was the mushrooming of TV channels with focus on talk shows. (When I, 25 years ago, wrote a policy paper for an African country, with a local expert, we didn’t imagine this development.)

READ MORE: SHC grants bail to Sharjeel Memon in corruption case
It is an America style for TV channels to have their own people talk about what the newsmakers say and do, even before they have finished speaking, interpreting and twisting before the event is over. Through that, the media personalities become almost as important as newsmakers and events. The right wing ‘Fox News’ in America is certainly good and quite extreme at this. It seems that their ideal is not to be neutral, objective and educational; it seems that opinions and hidden agendas rule. To some extent, such TV channels almost resemble social media with all their fake and tilted information, and many TV channels have today borrowed some of this way of operating.

In our time and in future, in Pakistan, I believe we would have done better with three or five TV channels. The same way as we have a limited numbers of English and Urdu dailies, we can live well with less than a hundred TV channels. In future, perhaps they can join hands, group and become strong in reporting and investigating news, and they may even be financially strong enough to play the role of the ‘forth estate’, independent, trusted and admired by all. Today, newspapers still have some of this role, but alas, fewer people, indeed few young people, read printed newspapers. And if they do, they look them up on the smart phone, but then is becomes quite scattered and scanty; many also read social media messages rather than the old-fashioned, mainstream and real media.

When Pirzada in his lecture was critical to the role of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and PTV, we can quickly agree that he had some points and that a new national media framework and policies are needed. That mainly means new regulations! However, it will not be easy to go from the free and liberal situation of today, yes, messy, fuzzy and unproductive, and ‘back’ to a world of more regulations. Yet, I believe it will have to come. I believe that the government needs to support a few main TV channels, even have ownership of them with the private sector. The channels must, however, be run independently in the style of public broadcasting, what we used to call the ‘BBC model’. Also, newspapers and print media need to be given a better environment and roles and regulations suitable to our time and the future. It is essential that the professional, mainstream media are the main sources of information, not the social media. But they can also inform the mainstream media about news and issues. The strength of real news media is that they have gatekeepers and professional journalists and editors. There is great potential for the future of the real, professional media – and it is time that all countries, including Pakistan, discuss and define the roles and functions of the media in a comprehensive and firm way. Technology has given us new tools, but we also have old experience; together the world will be better.

 

[jamal18]

There is a strange belief that Media owned by private industry is 'free', while media owned by the state is 'biased'.

Wrong. All Media is biased, towards those who pay for it.

If you want to control a country, control the Media.

 

[El Sidd]

Sami Ibrahim ko 6 lac dilwado. chamaat khaya hai usne minister se.

logon ke huqooq kahi se to dena shuru karo