Media, mullah and morbid society
“All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgarize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level.”
William Bernbach
“Nation and press rise and fall together” is an old saying. Rise and fall of the press, now generally called media, can not be judged in isolation. If the society on the whole is on decline, the press, individually, can not progress professionally, ethically and intellectually. Journalism and journalists are a reflection of what is going on in the society. If the society is on the path of fanaticism and fascism, the journalists would certainly have some traits of fellow men and women living around them.
A section of media persons, dubbed as media Taliban or Jehadi journalists by some critics, has not been sprung up just in a night like mushrooms. They are the logical outcome of three decades of the Islamization of Pakistani society and particularly Islamization of curriculum and educational and cultural institutions including the institutions of art, literature and journalism. The transfiguration of the society and the cultural institutions, from progressive, secular to religious fanaticism, began during fateful years of General Zia-ul-Haq’s dictatorship.Before Zia era, particularly, the journalism was divided into two mainstreams; progressive-Leftist and conservative-Rightist. There was a space for both of the ideologies to be discussed and promoted. A large number of progressive journalists and well-known Leftists and trade unionists, were working with the newspapers, particularly of the Progressive Papers Limited owned by National Press Trust, PTV and some other news organizations including Dawn. Progressive writers and intellectuals, including Faiz Ahmad Faiz, were also holding important positions in cultural and literary organizations because of Z. A. Bhutto’s government, and there was a battle of thoughts and ideologies being waged in the country.
The process of mopping up news organizations from progressive-leftist-trade union activists started in early 1980s during the Zia Martial Law. According to Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, the press suffered the worst during Zia's Martial Law, legitimized under a Supreme Court judgment on the pretext of so-called “law of necessity. “While this period may be remembered for its oppressive measures, including long spell of censorship, banning of dissenting newspapers, arrest of editors and journalists, awarding them rigorous imprisonment under Martial Law Regulations and even whipping them, it was also marked by memorable resistance put by journalists and press workers, led by the PFUJ under the leadership of Minhaj Barna (Pakistan Times) and Nisar Usmani.
It was also during Gen Zia’s regime that ten senior journalists and office-bearers of the PFUJ belonging to the National Press Trust newspapers (Pakistan Times, Imroze and Mashriq) were summarily removed from service because they signed an appeal for "Peace in Sindh " when General Zia repressed and persecuted the people indiscriminately during the 1983 Movement for Restoration of Democracy (MRD).
During the Zia Martial Law, All Pakistan Newspapers Society (APNS) and Council of Pakistan Newspapers Editors (CPNE), the organizations of owners and editors of the newspapers sided with the dictatorship and General Zia used to be the chief guest of APNS annual dinners. General Zia patronized conservative rightist journalists, particularly those who were persecuted by Z. A. Bhutto, and created a pro-establishment powerful rightist-fundamentalist press which is still ruling the roost and siding with the establishment. In the meanwhile, the NPT newspapers were mopped up of progressive journalists and ultimately Pakistan Times and Imroze, the stronghold of Leftists, were closed down, later.
This was the time when mass communication departments were being established in different universities of the country. Jamaat-e-Islami, a harbinger of Islamic Revolution and pro-Zia and pro-Us Imperialism at that time, got hold of educational institutions through its students’ wing and teachers’ wing including the mass communication departments and started producing indoctrinated professionals, rather zombies, which later took over many fields of life including journalism. Unfortunately, the production of indoctrinated youth is still continuing as there is no change in curriculum and faculty of the higher educational institutions.
With Jehad-e-Afghanistan, the process of Islamization of society was started in the country. News agencies and newspapers were established to propagate the victories of Mujahideen in Afghanistan. Journalists’ visits were arranged for Afghan refugee camps. I was also member of a group of journalists who visited camps in FATA in 1983 and interviewed Gulbadin Hikmatyar in Peshawar. During this time, the influence of intelligence agencies and religio-polital parties increased among the journalists and news organizations.
Syed Irfan Ashraf, a teacher at the University of Peshawar says (Dawn, 04 June, 2010), “The strength of the radical media lies in its purposeful evolution which was more the product of jingoistic circumstances and less the result of any public need for radical gratification. To understand this phenomenon we need to revisit the early 1980s when the US and some other countries threw their weight behind the seven Afghan jihadi parties. ‘Jihad’ then was a project designed specifically to weaken the USSR, and songs were composed so that the message of the Mujahideen could reverberate across refugee camps.”
1980s was the period when Gulf States led by Saudi Arabia intervened in Pakistan to counter the influence of Iranian revolution and poured money to establish madressahs and mosques throughout Pakistan. According to a study, there are now 27 times as many madressahs in the country as there were in 1947: from 245 at independence, the number has shot up to 6870 in 2001. Across Pakistan, the religious tenor has been correspondingly radicalised and this sort of madressahs-driven change in attitudes is being reproduced across the country.
Syed Irfan Ashraf further says, “The militant press ought to have folded with the end of the Afghan war in 1989 but the Kashmir cause gave it a new lifeline. Unlike the past, this time radical elements from Punjab were in the forefront. As they were more sectarian in outlook, militant (journalists) increasingly took to promoting religious divisiveness. Later, after 2001, the radical media thrived on anti-Americanism.”
Along with the ideological changes, the journalism suffered onslaught of commercialism, corporate interest and new-rich entrants in media. The institution of ‘Editor’ almost vanished and young offsprings of the owners of media organizations took positions of the editor in their many-editions newspapers. New generations of journalists came forward through large number of TV and radio channels having no opportunity of training and learning and with no concept of journalistic ethics. The result is that the other day, an anchor on Pakistan Television asks from the guest who mentioned great Chinese leader late Zhou Enlai during the talk that was he president of China?
Today, what we find in media is an alliance of state’s ideology of jingoism and exclusion, indoctrinated-educated middle class and corporate interest. The Journal of Conflict Resolution (2009) observes that higher-income and higher-literacy groups in Pakistan were actually more supportive of militancy than lower-income and lower-literacy groups, and the Pakistani public’s support for militancy is essentially a political decision.
Media, today, is under complete control of the state, corporate sector and the ultra Right columnists, anchors, guests in talk shows, analysts etc. Any progressive-secular media outlet in Pakistan is non-existent. Journalism has been tailored to the ideological interests of the state and its partners in politics, and information is used just to promote a reactionary culture. And, if, as Malcolm X once said, you are not careful, the newspapers (media) will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.
| Mazhar Arif is a senior journalist, media critic, researcher, writer and people’s rights activist presently working as Executive Director, Society for Alternative Media and Research (SAMAR), an organization seeking space for voices of the voiceless in the media and engaged with promoting media literacy to enable readers, viewers and listeners to understand and analyze media contents. |